MarTech Interview with Rachel Gantz, Managing Director, Proximic by Comscore

Rachel Gantz, Managing Director at Proximic by Comscore shares a few key insights from her team’s recently published State of Programmatic report while throwing light on the various trends that will dominate the digital ad ecosystem in the coming months:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Rachel, tell us about yourself and more about your role at Proximic?

Thank you so much for having me! To introduce myself, I’m currently the Managing Director of Proximic by Comscore, a business unit dedicated to solving programmatic’s biggest challenges: how to reach the right audience, in the right moment, with data that actually performs. When I’m not trying to change the world of adtech, I can typically be found hanging out with my husband,  two young daughters, and dog Dodger in the Greater Boston area.

With regards to my role, as a long-time Comscorian, I know first-hand that many people in the industry solely think of Comscore as the authority on audience measurement. Now, with the creation of Proximic by Comscore, we are putting more focus on helping the buy and sell side reach audiences programmatically leveraging the most innovative, performative, and privacy-centric data in market. As Managing Director, I oversee all facets of the team from sales, partnerships and marketing to analytics, product and engineering. I’m thrilled to be leading a business and team that has been at the forefront of innovation in the ad targeting space from the beginning. We are turning traditional technological methods such as contextual targeting on their head and as a result producing innovative, scalable audiences that are truly differentiated – something hard to do in such a commoditized space. Leading this team is such an honor, and I’m lucky to have such talented people at my side.

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We’d love to hear a few key findings from your team’s recent report on the State of Programmatic Advertising: what do you feel advertisers today need to consider based on these findings?

There were a few key trends from our recent State of Programmatic report that stand out as ones marketers should be aware of and take into consideration for their own strategies.

The first being that of all of the mainstream media types, podcast and audio advertising saw the largest growth. The data indicated that 5% more marketers planned to invest in this media type in 2023 as compared to 2022. That brings the total share of marketers expected to invest in podcast or audio advertising in 2023 to 60%. That said, it’s not necessarily a surprising trend as the number people listening to podcast and audio content and the amount of time they spend listening continues to skyrocket.

With so many marketers delving into this medium it’s a good idea for those who have not yet tested the waters to consider what audio could do for their business. For those who are already investing, it’s important to continue to test and learn across different audio formats and targeting strategies to ensure you’re finding the best ways to reach and connect with your consumers. Consistency in targeting approaches across media is critical – this is why it’s important to find providers who can help with solutions across all media channels.

The second major trend we observed was that more than half of all of our survey respondents (56%) expect their use of contextual data to increase this year. A key takeaway from this is that the majority of marketers are taking signal loss seriously, and with good reason.

The industry is seeing a continual drop-off in IDs coming through the bidstream even before we factor in Google’s cookie deprecation. And while there are many options for marketers to consider as alternatives to cookies for targeting purposes such as alternative IDs and 1st party data, we’re seeing a lot of folks lean into advanced contextual data and seeing real, significant outcomes.

What are some of the common challenges digital advertisers face today and how do you feel advertisers can address them using new innovations in adtech?

The two largest challenges that we observe with marketers today are navigating privacy requirements and overcoming signal loss. These are essentially two sides of the same coin.

Without a federal privacy law, marketers are increasingly forced to work hand-in-hand with their privacy teams to decipher each state’s privacy laws and ensure the tactics they are deploying will drive business outcomes while being on the right side of privacy. This is no easy task!

Simultaneously, signal loss resulting from regulatory and privacy changes is already impacting advertisers. With iOS changes wreaking havoc on mobile marketing and already over 50% of programmatic inventory lacking a person-based identifier according to the latest IAB State of Data report, reaching audiences in a privacy friendly manner is already a challenge.  When third party cookie deprecation accelerates in Q1 2024 this problem will only exacerbate.

Adtech innovations, especially with AI-driven contextual technologies are helping to lead the path to overcoming signal loss in a privacy-first manner. But not all approaches to privacy are created equal, so for better or worse the onus is on the advertisers to ensure they are selecting data partners who are offering privacy-first technologies. For a long time the world of ad targeting was the wild west with low standards for data quality, methodological rigor, and performance. Those days are over, the bar must be raised and advertisers are going to be the ones who have to lead the charge to raise it.

What can today’s advertising teams and marketers do better to drive conversions from their online ad campaigns?

Better conversions begin with better targeting data. Reaching the right consumer, while respecting their privacy, is harder than it used to be, but no less important. The advertisers who are doing this well are increasingly building their first party data, cultivating it to drive outcomes, then working with sophisticated data providers to help them turn that first party data gold into scalable and actionable privacy-friendly segments that will help them drive conversions.

We’re encouraged and excited about the possibilities for continuing to drive strong conversions without third party identifiers as we test the ability for marketers to marry tactics like Proximic by Comscore’s Predictive Audiences technology, a ‘forget everything you know about contextual targeting’ contextual audience solution with a brand’s first party data to maximize that data’s value. They say necessity is the mother of invention and that has never been more true than with the deprecation of third party cookies.

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Take us through some of the adtech and programmatic trends that you feel will dominate the market for the near-future?

 There has been a lot of discussion on programmatic TV.  Is TV programmatic? Will it ever be? Will programmatic degrade and commoditize what has always been the gold standard of advertising? I think the trends on this are fascinating. We know from the upfronts this year that the silos between programmatic CTV and traditional linear television are falling, and I think that is a wonderful thing! TV advertising has the ability to tell stories and capture hearts and minds like no other medium. When you combine that with better data capabilities, and the ability to reach audiences in a privacy-forward and scaled way, the possibilities are endless. For 2024 we expect to leapfrog over ‘The Year of CTV’ and go straight to ‘The Year of Programmatic TV’. I’m proud of the innovations Proximic by Comscore is doing to further this trend and to support advertisers and broadcasters as they start to dip their toes and then fully dive into programmatic TV.