eBay Advertising will run a ‘Programmatic Only Week’ between 6th and 12th February 2017, serving only ads bought on a programmatic basis, and only accepting bookings made programmatically. Revealing that over two thirds (69%) of its top advertisers now buy 90% or more of their adverts programmatically, eBay Advertising is encouraging its advertiser and agency […]
eBay Advertising will run a ‘Programmatic Only Week’ between 6th and 12th February 2017, serving only ads bought on a programmatic basis, and only accepting bookings made programmatically.
Revealing that over two thirds (69%) of its top advertisers now buy 90% or more of their adverts programmatically, eBay Advertising is encouraging its advertiser and agency partners to seize the opportunity to review their programmatic capabilities, identifying what still needs to be done to unlock the channel’s full potential.
The publisher is also challenging the wider advertising industry to embrace a programmatic-only future, claiming that a fondness for the familiar has resulted in too many stakeholders continuing to rely heavily on direct sales.
This announcement comes two years after eBay Advertising ran its first Programmatic Only Week in a bid to dispel the perception of programmatic as a channel for remnant inventory, and to test its own capacity to operate on a programmatic only basis.
This time round, eBay Advertising will use Programmatic Only Week to assess its progress and explore whether programmatic capabilities are reaching a point at which they can equal or outperform those of direct sales, thereby freeing up the time of salespeople and allowing them to concentrate on delivering more effective advertising solutions
Rob Bassett, Sales Director, eBay Advertising, comments: “There’s widespread agreement that programmatic trading is the future of advertising. And yet, we still haven’t seen it embraced it to the extent we had hoped over the last two years. This is in spite of significant developments that have successfully addressed many of the technology challenges we identified during our first Programmatic Only Week.
“At eBay Advertising, we have used insights gained in 2015 and focused on developing our parallel bidding solutions to make our premium inventory available to all advertisers. Our ambition this year is to test whether improvements in programmatic capabilities have truly made it a more efficient solution across all campaigns”
Bassett concludes: “Until we realise the full potential of programmatic, brands, agencies and publishers are missing out on the opportunity to reach audiences in more relevant and interesting ways. With consumers increasingly frustrated by poorly targeted advertising and with ad blocking continuing to rise, the industry must now to embrace programmatic as one of the most effective levers to address this issue.”
