Lorraine Twohill, Google’s global CMO who attended the Web Summit in Dublin recently, was quoted as saying that “I want 60% of my marketing digital spend to go through programmatic.”
That’s a huge goal for the online search giant, who Twohill revealed is in the process of moving all of its ad campaigns over to programmatic as well as facing the current limitations of the ad buying process (it doesn’t have skippable ads, for example) head-on.
One challenge that Google faces is simply that, in order to actually increase their programmatic ad spending to 60%, they’re going to have to retrain their entire ad buying team as their jobs are changing rapidly.
“There’s things in programmatic that aren’t quite there yet,” says Twohill according to BI, adding that “I really care about ads where people can play and engage.” What she’s referring to is the fact that the programmatic process doesn’t yet support bands that are skippable or mutable, two features that consumers like very much..
It’s also impossible to determine cost per click with programmatic and, with these barriers in the way, getting to 60% is going to be difficult. As Twohill sees it, however, “it’s inevitable.”
In fact, Google’s CMO predicts that all advertising will, eventually, be purchased programmatically, even outdoor billboards. She believes that the industry is too comfortable at the moment and is encouraging the creative agencies that she works with to be more open-minded about the coming opportunities with programmatic.
It’s a grand scheme, that’s for sure, and all eyes in the ad industry will no doubt beyond Google in 2015 to see if they can pull it off.