In advertising, the impacts of technology are diverse. Organizations are tasked with managing more advertising options than ever before, and consumers are more integrated with advertising information than they have been in the past.

There was a time when only few options were available for advertising like print media, electronic channels & outdoor advertisement. But with the penetration of internet and smart phones across the country, consumer’s footprints on mobile, digital, and social platforms has increased by leaps and bounds. This evolution of technology has led the marketers to wake up to the promise of targeted ads.

Almost a decade ago, ad networks grew to broker buying and selling of ad space between publishers and marketers. But marketers couldn’t track whether they were getting the right ROI, as they did not have a mechanism to know who was really seeing their ads. The traditional media like print gives the ROI in terms of their circulation, but it never gives a guarantee if the advertisement is seen by the prospective customer. Same is the case with electronic media; viewers might just flip the channel and our advertisement might not get the desired ROI. This led to the existence of ad exchanges and real-time bidding (RTB) platforms which helped advertisers bid for advertising space via an auction model and deliver the ad impressions.

Ad exchange platforms are acting as a big pool of ad impressions. It is enabling advertisers to easily buy ads across a range of sites at one go, as opposed to negotiating directly with specific publishers. It’s a more effective and efficient way to buy and sell space. Publishers tip their ad impressions into the pool hoping someone will buy them. Buyers then pick which impressions they wish to purchase using technologies like Demand Side Platforms (DSP). Those decisions are often made in real time based on information such as the previous behavior of the user an ad is being served to, time of day, device type, ad position, and more. With this

advancement in technology on digital platform, companies are experiencing a better reach and ROI for the campaigns.

Technology is helping and giving the benefit at each and every level in this business, as the advertisers are getting the benefit of generating the desired ROI & completing their matrix and publishers are getting the pricing & volume of their inventory.

The use of programmatic buying is one such technology which uses Real Time Bidding (RTB) through a Demand Side Platform (DSP) to buy relevant impressions on any portal and reach out to the targeted customers with the help of data analytics. If a company wants a customer to watch the desired ad at least five times, then only the advertisers need to pay for it; otherwise there they are not charged. This helps to create a brand visibility and register the brand in customer’s subconscious mind so that whenever they aspire for the product in that category, they give preference to those brands only. This directly helps in increasing the sales and helps in giving the desired ROI unlike other media platforms.

Technology is helping aggregate inventory from a range of publishers and further sell it to the desired audience for a profit. Ad exchanges are acting as a more transparent platform rather than the traditional approach as they are enabling buyers to see exactly what price impressions are being sold for. Advertisers, agencies, publishers and ad middlemen are buying more of their media through ad exchange platforms than before, but there’s often confusion around what they actually are and how to utilize the technological advancement in this space.

The programmatic buying industry is at a very nascent stage in India and has not picked up the way it should have been. Marketers and agencies are still taking time to understand the benefit of such platforms as compared to the traditional way. India’s growing internet population would seem to make it a prime market for RTB and programmatic buying, and in the next five years, the advertising industry would defiantly see a tremendous inclination towards this. However, there are many challenges which the industry is facing at present.

Current Issues in the Industry

Ad Networks & Middle-men are lack in adopting the technology.

Making buyers and publishers understand about the value and opportunity available to them.

Relying on people driven approach and as a result, the advertisers are not getting the desired ROI.

To get the solution to this problem, the advertising business should move on from person or relation driven approach to more of a programmatic approach to deliver the quality work and desired ROI of the advertisers.

Ad exchanges act as a more transparent platform than the traditional approach, as they enable buyers to see exactly at what price impressions are being sold for