On Native and Programmatic

Earlier this week I was asked an interesting question by Digiday. “What’s More Important: Native Ads or Programmatic Buying?” I thought the question was a bit conflated – it’s not either or. It very much depends on how you define the terms.

My response is below. Check the story for the opinions of many others in the industry as well.

If I had to wager a guess, I’d have to say that programmatic will be a larger force, but only if you take “native” to mean the native units at domain-specific platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the like. But it’s very important to define your terms here because in five years time, I think you will be able to buy all of these “native” units across a unified “programmatic” platform — and that platform has not yet been built. We are, as an industry, heading in that direction, and it’s a very exciting one. When programmatic merges with native and is fueled by data and a transparent, objective framework, everyone wins.

For more on this, check my earlier posts What Should the Ads Be Like? and The Evolution of Display: Change Is Here, For Good.

25 thoughts on “On Native and Programmatic”

  2. I hope you are right about this “buy all of these “native” units across a unified “programmatic” platform” That would be a major change from a user/consumer point of view. Great answer by the way!

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  17. I’m impressed, I I come across a blog that’s both informative and entertaining, thnx for shraing.

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