• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, March 7, 2017

Programmatic advertising is becoming de rigueur for a majority of marketers, according a new report. In fact, 80% of those surveyed are “familiar” or “extremely familiar” with programmatic advertising, and 66% of marketers report that programmatic advertising resulted in greater ROI versus traditional media buying. In addition, nearly two-thirds of all marketers expanded their programmatic campaigns to mobile devices in 2016, and 68% of marketers plan to increase their mobile retargeting budgets in 2017.

The findings are based on a State of the Industry report released on Tuesday by AdRoll, which surveyed more than 1,300 marketers in Europe and North America that use its prospecting and retargeting platform. The goal of the report was to gain a better understanding of how marketers are reaching prospects throughout the entire marketing funnel.

Among the report’s findings:

--Nearly two-thirds of marketers said they planned to increase their programmatic budgets in 2017.

--In 2013, only 7% of marketers dedicated more than half of their budgets to programmatic. By 2015, that had increased to over 30%. In 2016, that number jumped to more than 50%. The number of marketers who reported spending less than 10% of their budgets on programmatic fell from 40% to under 8% over that same period.

--In 2016, more than 75% of marketers decided to run programmatic advertising on social media platforms -- up more than 10% from 2015. AdRoll customers that extended their campaigns to include a social media platform as well as the Web saw an average increase in click-through rates  of over 66% and an overall 43% increase in the number of impressions. 

--Seventy-seven percent of marketers ran programmatic ads on social media in 2016, while 53% ran programmatic on mobile and 37% did so on video.

--More than 50% of the marketers surveyed are currently investing more than half of their budgets in programmatic initiatives alone, up 32% from 2015 data. And 54% of marketers reported paid social media to be the most successful channel for marketers to attract new customers, followed by organic social media (35%), and programmatic display advertising (32%).

--Nearly 75% of marketers surveyed said attribution is “important” or “critically important.” While a majority of marketers rely on first- or last-click attribution models, almost 60% reported that they plan on changing their approach in 2017. In addition, 40% reported spending the majority of their budget on measurement alone.

The research found marketers placing a sharp focus on attribution. “Since our last State of the Industry report, interest in attribution — marketing measurement — has continued to increase exponentially,” Shane Murphy, VP of Marketing, AdRoll, told Real-Time Daily via email. “Nearly 60% of marketers reported they plan to change their approach in 2017 from a first- or last-click model which was previously the norm.”