The combination of AI Custom Bidding and Programmatic Buying will be an integral part to unlocking true value in digital advertising
The internet is an ever-evolving industry and digital marketing is no exception. Banner ads were hype until people went banner blind. Today, the fast growing adoption of tools like AI, chatbots, and machine learning is revolutionary. The future of marketing is moving away from manual strategies and this shift has allowed programmatic advertising to enter the marketing space. Programmatic Advertising is a method of automated advertising, explicitly using data and algorithms to automatically plan, buy and optimize media to deliver the most accurate targeting to the specified audience. Traditionally advertisers manually negotiated website placements with website owners, but this has been replaced by manual elements of this process for both the buyer and the supply side.
In Thailand, programmatic advertising solutions have been spearheaded by Bidmath, a company powered by a machine learning custom bidding technology, with it’s regional hub based in Bangkok. Bidmath is an end-to-end programmatic and data analytics consultancy. The company provides programmatic advertising solutions to brands. It has acquired global advertiser contracts through the combination of data science and transparent programmatic management, where media efficiency plus advanced use of first-party data is the key focus. With membership of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and DAAT (Digital Advertising Association Thailand) solidifying its reputation, Bidmath has established strong traction in Thailand and across SEA markets for world-class platform expertise across several technologies such as Google, Adobe, Xandr (formerly known as Appnexus) & The Trade Desk.
Bidmath manages and advises the world’s largest brands across campaigns, data analytics, and artificial intelligence-based custom bidding algorithms with the goal of driving efficiency. There are two immediate factors that set Bidmath apart. The first is the combination of data science (use of AI) and programmatic activation. The second is transparency, both commercially and across all optimizations and solutions where Bidmath works with clients, both of these factors echo back to the core premise of the business vision. To develop a new type of data science-driven programmatic consultancy merging artificial intelligence and transparent platform buying together, harnessing technology experts with the pure focus on the fast-growing region of Asia Pacific.
KK Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO and Nate Acton, Chief Strategy Officer at Bidmath both aim to make brands understand the advantages of adopting programmatic advertising and why it should be done now rather than later.
Sharma states: "The key reasons behind the growth in programmatic adoption in Thailand have been down to the efficiencies in media investment that advertisers have identified when running campaigns, whether it is across video or display or audio. The second reason for automating the buying using platforms and layering machine learning for algorithmic optimisation is the mitigation of manual administrative tasks involved in the campaign process, advertisers are now able to focus more time on strategic thinking compared to before, simply by leveraging artificial intelligence custom models using the data they have collected. Many brands that we are working with are achieving significant savings in media investment simply by leveraging the use of first-party data and AI models for optimisation."
Bidmath has a strong portfolio of brands across campaign management, data strategy and AI solutions. The consultancy works with advertisers from a variety of verticals spanning from FMCG, Telcom, Automotive, Property, and Finance. In Thailand, Bidmath's AI custom algorithm solution with a global FMCG leader has allowed them to deliver nearly 40% media efficiencies across programmatic video through the effective use of data.
Nate Acton, Chief Strategy Officer at Bidmath
"Within the dairy category, our data science hub in Bangkok collaborated with a Japanese brand focusing on Thailand to support the development of first-party data using technology and deploying brand lift surveys to generate audience insights unlocking valuable information about customer preferences against their competitive set. The brand was then able to segment their audience further by location and time of day and achieve more than 20% lift in purchase intent," says Nate Acton, Chief Strategy Officer at Bidmath.
"Thailand has been a crucial market and growth opportunity for Bidmath where the adoption of programmatic is growing and aligned with the higher consumption of online video such as OTT across partners such as Viu, Line TV and CH3, combined with the exponential growth in time spent on gaming apps. All of these consumption habits and industry changes have meant that brands in Thailand are investing even more in marketing technology to reach their audience," says KK Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Bidmath.
"Bidmath has taken this a few leaps further combining artificial intelligence to the mix to shift towards further efficiencies in media buying across display, video, audio and social media. With the massive amount of available data, programmatic advertising makes it easier for advertisers to create more personalised and much more successful digital advertising strategies. At this rate, programmatic advertising is going to be an integral part of digital advertising strategy in the future." he added.
Bidmath announced the launch of the programmatic and data hub in 2019 with the mindset that data quantity is only valuable once the insights and optimisation methods have derived from clean, organised and understood data sets and measurement is critical to understanding if it is working better. The largest opportunity in data analytics consultancy is actively growing and by further growing our regional business using Bangkok as the base allows us to be firmly placed as a tech agnostic partner to support advertisers here.