'Programmatic is like teenage sex. Everyone wants to do it, but no one knows how'

Automation is hitting all parts of marketing and the creative industry isn't spared either. But automating creativity can be perceived as a threat to those in the creative agency scene, with some having the perception that it will eventually take away the jobs of creatives.But rather than fear it, Riku Vassinen (pictured), digital business director, J. Walter Thompson Singapore, speaking at Marketing’s Digital Performance Marketing 2017 conference said that programmatic and creativity are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are partners. Additionally, Vassinen said that seeing automated ads as a threat to creative agencies is a “short-sighted” view. He added,If machines can do the job [of creativity], it’s not really a job that agencies should want to do.“Of course there is fear around it, but there are already a lot of run of the mill things that all the agencies are doing that should be done by machines. My point is if machines are doing these tasks, you can actually concentrate on the more important things,” Vassinen said.He added that machines will eventually overtake some jobs in all industries."I want us to also start testing not only dynamic optimised creatives and I want to move to the level that we start actually utilising them as an industry," he said. Hence, agencies need to take the first step by working better and embracing these machines. In mature markets such as the US, 80% of all digital ad buys are programmatic and "my prediction is that almost all of the digital ads will involve programmatic soon", he added.Display advertising, for example, could be an area that machines can create independently, he added.A slave to performanceVassinen said programmatic is not the means to an end but "a slave to performance and brand". However, he warned against companies feeling the need to jump onto programmatic because it is the trend and because competitors are talking about it. However he reminded companies to always consider if programmatic will help drive brand performance."As more of your goals become performance based, the quality [of ads] will become more important. Creativity, in this instance, improves programmatic and programmatic principles can improve creatives such as tapping into the right data to generate different variations of an ad," Vassinen said.He stressed that it is not about the number of ads that companies are serving to people that matters, but rather, the effectiveness of the ads."Creative agencies are always talking about how many different variations they should serve consumers. Talking about the number of ads is irrelevant, it's the effectiveness that matters. We should be asking what we are able to do when we roll out these ads," he said.  And of course, none of this would be possible without good clean data. At the end of the day, the truth remains that programmatic buying is more effective way of buying.If machines do a better job than humans, the job will go to machines.Need for a common languageWhen it comes to programmatic, one problem the industry encounters is that there is no common language for the technology.Programmatic is like teenage sex. Everyone wants to do it, no one knows how. Clients are often confused about what programmatic means.“To me, programmatic marketing is about machines buying, serving and optimising advertising so that we can target the right audience,” he said.  From a creative standpoint, he added that creative variables account for over 50% of the programmatic effectiveness.Quoting Mike Zeman, director of North American digital marketing at Netflix, Vassinen said:Essentially, if you are not thinking about your creative, 50% of your media budget is at stake."You have to think about what is creative for the audience," he added.Read more: 'It's imperative that as a brand, you cannot work in silos'