Last week’s AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference drew an unexpectedly large audience of about 900 publishers, brands, agencies, adtech and other industry executives to focus on all things programmatic. Programmatic’s main innovations are data-driven advertising and automated workflow in public and private exchanges or marketplaces where advertising trades can be more efficiently and effectively managed.

At BIA/Kelsey’s Programmatic I/O workshop, (see the video here: Programmatic and the Power Brew of Marketing to Local Audiences), we highlighted what we’re forecasting to be the highest growth areas in local audience target ad spend – social, video and mobile or what we call the “power brew.” We featured three case studies of publishers, adtech and brands using programmatic locally: Centro and Cox Media Group; Yashi and Essence Digital; and 22Squared and Toyota. In each case study, we examined the campaign objectives and descriptions of how programmatic added value to creating the solutions for targeting local audiences with relevant messaging.

Already, the majority of digital display and mobile ads are traded programmatically. Programmatic advertising is one of the more dynamic parts of the marketplace as its use and spending extends from search and display into other ad platforms including local television. An increasing amount of this marketplace is targeting local audiences by layering in first, second and third party data for message targeting. Adding local audience targeting drives higher ROIs.

• In the Cox/Centro case study, Eric Myers, VP Ad Sales at the Atlanta Journal Constitution worked with Centro’s Katie Risch, SVP Client Software Solutions to develop an audience extension strategy to reach custom segments using first-party data and  to drive conversions (in this case form fills) for their client, the Atlanta Falcons. Over 30 million ad impressions were delivered.
• Nerali Patel, head of strategy and partnerships at Yashi worked with Jeremy Sigel, Essence Digital’s director of mobile to develop a hyperlocal campaign dayparted for business hours targeting C-level execs and IT execs within a five-mile radius of Fortune 1000 headquarters and campuses in the U.S. The desktop and mobile display and video campaign delivered 7 million uniques and higher than industry benchmark results for views and click-throughs.
• Kyle Lebet, associate media director at 22Squared show how his work with Toyota solved the question of “how does a brand speak personally to a broad audience?” Using programmatic to layer in audience targeting data, 22Squared developed specific audience segments to run (1) broad reach, then (2) segmented and finally (3) direct engagement video messaging to reach and engage consumer’s with Toyota’s Camry messaging.