• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 16, 2015

During a time when advertisers struggle with fragmented programmatic ad buying processes and lack of transparency, Adobe will roll out Wednesday an advanced programmatic ad platform on track to completely integrate tasks in the Adobe Marketing Cloud. 

The Adobe Media Optimizer for advertisers and media publishers now powers the self-service programmatic platform. The update focuses on integrating display advertising, but also now allows advertisers to take control of automated and integrate ad buys for search and social media across ad exchanges and media networks — from partners like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Rubicon Project, and Index Exchange. 

For Latanya Hodges, senior manager of interactive marketing, Redbox, managing campaigns through programmatic channels provides deeper insights through data and automation. In fact, the company sees a 106% lift in return on display ad spend.

While it’s increasingly difficult to track when, where and how digital ads perform, marketers demand more accountability, which means a clearer picture of media costs, ad performance and revenue. For Adobe's clients, it comes from tighter integration between Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager.

Stephan Beringer, CEO of the VivaKi Operating System, believes Adobe is addressing some major industry issues through its programmatic platform by connecting technology and data silos.

The integration gives advertisers access to data to refine and target audience segments. Dynamic creative capabilities lets advertisers use images, video and other assets from Adobe Creative Cloud. It also gives publishers an opportunity to gain some control of their systems.

Adobe also announced a programmatic platform for media publishers. Adobe Primetime, Adobe's TV platform, supports broadcasters and pay TV service providers when monetizing TV experiences across screens. Content distributors are linked to multiple ad buyers to reach specific audiences at scale.

Programmatic does have its challenges.

It's complex to understand and automation sometimes masks attribution modeling. Tim Waddell, director of product marketing for Advertising Solutions at Adobe, admits Adobe has not focused enough attention on attribution "from a creative, messaging, sequencing point of view," because the metric is so unique to every customer, which makes it complex. "There's no boiler plate version of attribution," he says.