US media agency chiefs outline pros and cons of Time Inc's 'evolutionary shift' to programmatic print

It cited advertiser demand as the dominant reason for its move to progammatic print, so The Drum spoke to media agencies including Havas, Dentsu Aegis Network, and MediaVest, to guage their thoughts on the move, and if they plan to follow suit and incorporate the technique to their media plans.

Some agency bosses have hailed the move an "evolutionary shift" in how traditional media is bought and sold, while others have questioned the long-term effectiveness of the move and its ability to alleviate the pressure on ad page rates.

Adam Kasper, chief media officer, Havas Media, North America

The launch of a product like this is exciting because it represents an evolutionary shift in how to think about buying ‘traditional’ media. The potential shift from pub selection to audience targeting could energize the print medium. I think this offering would be particularly relevant to high volume print and even newspaper advertisers who could create workflow efficiencies and benefit from better targeting. It may also be a boon to publishers who could cut costs of sales.

We will definitely test this and other opportunities to expand our offering and lead our clients into new spaces. My concerns would be that the early versions of programmatic print are only offering relatively broad segments to target. It's potentially an advantage that you can automate but without the ability to use a client’s own data or target deeper than a segment like "luxury" or "women," there are obvious limitations.

A big question to me is: what kind of targeting is really possible based on where printing technology is today? This may need to be the area that evolves to catch up with advertising decisioning before programmatic print can be talked about in the same breath as digital.

The traditional process of negotiating and placing print is a time-consuming one. For high volume print advertisers automated technologies like this will help streamline the planning, buying and executing of print buys just as they have in other channels. I think you will see long-tail and remnant print move to automation first as they have in other channels. I do wonder about the need for premium national print to be sold programmatically though this is not different from TV or even digital.

Robin Steinberg, EVP, director of MediaVest publishing investment and activation

Creating a programmatic platform solution in print is a good first step to automate the process and provide audience targeting guarantees. The big advantage for Time Inc in the short term is providing the opportunity to marketers who are less familiar with purchasing print and whose main priority is to obtain guarantees based on broad audience segment(s), sacrificing issue date, positioning, competitive separation and in some cases price.

However, as an industry, we should pay attention, as the platform and technology will evolve and become increasingly sophisticated to support various data sources to deliver the type of precision targeting we all seek, along with the essential guarantees mentioned, cross screen.

Ginger Taylor White, EVP, managing director, Dentsu Aegis Network's media investment arm Amplifi

It is a smart move to draw in advertisers that are not currently buying print such as Target - a limited print advertiser in recent years. They are expanding their digital marketplace to include all channels, which is inclusive of magazines. From a business standpoint, it is a move they needed to make to promote and cross-sell brands.

In 2014, we [Amplifi] started to buy magazine brands in a similar way. We are exploring all innovation and targeted ways to buy magazine brands for our clients and will continue to do so if the buy delivers upon the brands objectives.

Each publishing house has similar offerings; they are just packaged differently. We feel all publishers need to be more flexible to meet clients' needs, and this is an example of Time Inc adjusting to the needs of Target.

We need to evaluate their categories, CPMs, capabilities as well as the trade-offs of doing a buy like this. However, this may work for some clients and not for others.

Lesley Pinckney, VP digital, Walton Isaacson

The Time Inc announcement to sell programmatic print ads leaves me both excited and underwhelmed at the same time. Making this move shows that there is an effort underway to do things differently. If this takes off it will be the biggest “new” thing for print since auto-renewal of subscriptions.

I’d also like to see innovation in the area that allows brands (for a premium) to be able to deliver final assets for print ads closer to the print date. If it leads to increases in ad pages, which drives editorial pages, it also might have the net effect increasing the heft of the books making consumers feel better about their purchases.

But...I’m underwhelmed for several reasons. Why call it programmatic? That seems like an overreach. Programmatic is widely accepted as the ability to use data and automated real-time bidding to maximize efficiency in your ad buy. It's not clear whether Time Inc’s platform can do this, and regardless it doesn’t allow for third-party data, a key factor to the effectiveness of programmatic.

It’s also not clear how this alleviates the pressure on ad page rates. With many advertisers focused on ROI, timeliness, and targeting capabilities in print, it’s not clear today how those concerns are addressed in a meaningful way. Of course top advertising spenders will be curious to test it and they should be, but based on what’s been shared to date, the long-term prognosis seems cloudy.

Ben Winkler, chief digital officer and chief innovation officer at OMD

This announcement is more exciting for what it represents than for what it is. Addressable print is inevitable, and this is a critical first step.

Adding automation to so-called traditional media has been a dicey proposition since Google AdSense folded its newspaper-buying service in the aughts. The technology has been there for a decade, but the lifeblood of advertising – suppy – has not. This announcement changes that.

For now, brands that rely on print will find Time Inc’s product worthy of testing. Reaching the same audience across both print and online is particularly intriguing.

As it exists, the product doesn’t yet deliver on the promises of programmatic: full automation; minimal waste; data-rich targeting. But the mindset is there, and for the print category, that may be the most important part. And we look forward to working with Time Inc to make that mindset manifest.