One of Dentsu’s main programmatic advocates, Wayne Blodwell has ended a run of lofty positions among leading performance marketing agencies to launch his own consultancy, The Programmatic Advisory.
In addition to his latest role as head of programmatic product activation at the media network’s trading desk, Amplifi, Blodwell’s resume includes overseeing the technology at another Denstu subsidiary, iProspect UK.
With first-hand knowledge of how advertisers are taking to automated ad buying, Blodwell plans to leverage his expertise to address the ‘education gap’ surrounding the technology.
In an article for PerformanceIN, Blodwell stated: “The people who sign off the marketing budgets do not understand the space fully enough to be confident investing sizeable budgets into it. Indeed, I’d argue that they don’t even know whom to turn to for help.”
A plan realised
Despite programmatic touted to take £2 billion in spend in the UK this year, a lack of knowledge is still considered the most hampering factor to its successful implementation at present.
The Programmatic Advisory claims to offer impartial consultancy services to advertisers, agencies, technology companies and publishers, pledging that it will never buy media or sign insertion orders. Instead, the company will operate on a success-based commission model.
With the launch of the advisory service, Blodwell is attempting to overcome what he has identified in the past as the key barrier to programmatic adoption – a lack of knowledge – among issues such as brand safety, technical interoperability and transparency.
Blodwell’s early conceptions for The Programmatic Advisory were laid out on this very site last year, as he called for agencies to tackle the “pervasive issue” by launching a consultancy service alongside their programmatic offerings.
This, he added, would be with the aim of offering impartial advice to help clients consider various technology products, services and solutions.
“A service like this can help brands select and implement the right solution for their needs. If desired, agencies should also seek to provide the talent needed to operate that technology, provide analysis and help clients re-deploy their programmatic insights back into their larger marketing plans.”