The Reaching Full Potential report gathered responses from over 500 advertisers, media buying and advertising agencies, publishers and ad tech companies across Europe. It found that 93% of the ‘advertising ecosystem’ believe that programmatic will play a vital part in all future digital advertising, with 71% recognising knowledge of programmatic as one of the most important capabilities that agencies will need to possess in five years’ time. The UK is the most likely (equal with France at 44%) to say that programmatic will be the dominant form of online advertising by 2020. Respondents in the UK are also more likely to be using programmatic for mobile ( 80% of all programmatic users) – the highest proportion in Europe.

However, advertisers and advertising agencies are lagging behind in terms of their uptake of the approach. They also report the highest levels of ignorance around the process works, with 53% of advertisers and 42% of agencies saying they understand very little or nothing about how programmatic works, compared with 34% overall. After a lack of understanding, the top two challenges related to use of programmatic are: ‘lack of transparency as to where ads will end up being placed’ ( 46%) and ‘fear of ads appearing on undesirable sites’ ( 45%).

The study was commissioned by ad tech company AppNexus in association with WARC and DDMA, and carried out by Circle Research.

“As the study highlights, there are still issues that need to be addressed, including a lack of programmatic understanding – especially among advertisers and agencies – which can have a huge impact on overall trust,” said Nigel Gilbert, VP strategic development EMEA at AppNexus.

“Tackling this head-on, along with issues around transparency and measurement, will allow programmatic to unlock its full potential, ensuring the industry can be more qualitatively effective in delivering advertising campaigns that are the lifeblood of the internet.”