Students At Canadian College Learn The Ins And Outs of Programmatic With Centro

Canadian college Sheridan will recruit students using Centro's demand-side platform (DSP), then train students on the same programmatic technology that brought them to the classroom. 

Digital ad tech firm Centro has a twofold partnership with Sheridan: Sheridan will license Centro's DSP (demand-side platform) to drive new students to sign up for classes, and they can take a course on programmatic advertising fundamentals through Sheridan's Faculty of Continuing and Professional Studies.

The course, taught by people from Centro's Customer Success team, includes lessons on DSPs, media planning, retargeting, methods for evaluating quality of audience data, campaign optimization, supply-side platforms (SSPs), open and private advertising exchanges, real-time bidding (RTB), open auction, programmatic direct, open RTB and Deal ID transactions. Students will be able to use the DSP for practice and testing. There are seven sessions in the class, with four of them in-class and three online.

Sheridan began using Centro to advertise programs and courses in early 2015, said Hayder Sultan, programmatic media project lead, Sheridan. From there, Centro asked how it could build on and externalize the education it offers to customers, per
Katie Risch, SVP of software client solutions, Centro.

The course is aimed at professionals, but anyone is welcome to sign up. "There's a pressing need and huge gap in this sector [for talent]," Sultan said, adding that even people with years in the industry face challenges with the tech. And that doesn't bode well for landing a job at brands, publishers, trading desks, agencies or tech firms. 

The course helps students through hands-on training with the DSP, said Risch -- with the added bonus of hearing students' feedback, which helps with iterating Centro's client education program.

Risch said she hears from many clients that there is a shortage of people who are in-the-know. Although many universities and colleges don't yet have programmatic programs built in, she said, once students or professionals learn the ins and outs of programmatic, they can be easily placed.

Sultan said some people have the impression that programmatic tech is challenging and requires a tech-savvy person -- but "once people are encouraged and have basic knowledge [of the tech], they'll start training and see it's a matter of strategy," he added.

About half (46%) of agencies are “unsure” about whether they trust programmatic technology to execute ad buys, according to a Strata agency survey from second-quarter 2015. And a 2014 ANA and Forrester survey of 153 client-side marketers found that about 40% claimed low or no understanding of programmatic buying.

Read more on programmatic education initiatives from Publicis, Quantcast and Videology. 

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