Ad tech vendors in the Asia-Pacific region are way too obsessed with the last click and are ignoring more meaningful interactions with consumers.

More importantly, last-click attribution is not in line with key business metrics, according to Ann Reilly and Jonathan Hardy, Adara's vice president of international sales and Asia vice president of sales, respectively.

The executives jointly tackle this week's Q&A exchange to discuss what needs to change for marketers in this region to enjoy the benefits that programmatic promises and how Programmatic 2.0 will take form.

ExchangeWire: Marketers in Asia-Pacific have been slow to take up programmatic. What are the barriers to adoption this region has yet to address? Which, for some reason, have not proven to be as challenging in Europe, US, and Australia?

Anne Reilly/Jonathan Hardy: As more developed, and typically more homogenous media markets, marketers in US, Europe, and Australia generally have access to larger pools of existing data and supporting programmatic ecosystems, facilitating early adoption. These opportunities have not been available to Asia-Pacific marketers to the same degree. It also can be argued that markets in this region are sometimes culturally more cautious when assessing new opportunities, in comparison to western markets.

Ann Reilly

However, the landscape is changing fast. Data pools are growing, the ecosystem is expanding quickly, and clients are embracing the chance to test new platforms and opportunities that are now available to them. In April 2015, eMarketer published a study revealing that 7-in-10 marketers in Asia-Pacific were using or planning to use programmatic. So, it is scaling up.

Ad fraud, brand safety, and viewability remain significant problems for marketers. Wasn't programmatic supposed to resolve these? What went wrong?

The promise of programmatic was to match the right user, to the right message, at the right time, for the best price. Platforms have been working to deliver on this; but, as the market is maturing, there is recognition that execution strategies need to evolve as well. The tools and benchmarks are now being set to help, and still deliver on the promise of programmatic, but in a way that meets a new set of expectations. This is not so much a case of things going wrong, but more the case of a new industry responding positively to growing pains.

What gaps are ad tech vendors still failing to address in the programmatic space?

The biggest issue is attribution. There is still too much focus in this region on the last click, which ignores the meaningful touch-points with the consumer along the path to purchase. Last-click attribution also doesn't match up with business metrics, such as driving new users. While current attribution modelling is complicated, the industry is working on how to leverage technology better to make this easier.

There are also a lot of ad tech vendors in the marketplace with general and duplicative data. That may be useful for broad reach, but marketers need expertise in their specific vertical.

Where does the conversation about programmatic need to go in order to take it to the next stage?

It has to start with the key business metrics for the marketer and how programmatic can help achieve these goals. The marketer then needs to understand data sources, and how to evaluate unique data sources that will drive performance and provide insights on touch-points along the path to purchase.

Jonathan Hardy

How should this differ when we put Asia-Pacific into the discussion?

The underlying factors to success in programmatic remain the same across geographies. This means having clear and concise goals – and not multiple goals – multiple ad units, shared reporting, ongoing tracking, and pixels in place to track and optimise against business metrics.

What differs in Asia-Pacific is that it is a highly fragmented region, in terms of both population sizes and languages. The scale of programmatic will vary by country, and marketers need to understand and evaluate the data they are using to ensure they are delivering the right message to the right consumer at the right time. Also, some demographics click on ads more than others, but marketers need to understand that clicks don't necessarily mean they are hitting their core business metrics.

How would you describe Programmatic 2.0?

Programmatic 2.0 is about moving from accessing excess inventory fast, to getting better inventory at scale. The use of quality data and connecting the data are keys to successful programmatic strategies. Viewability is being measured more closely, and marketers demand more insights and analytics from their programmatic buys.

What needs to happen today for this next-generation programmatic platform to materialise?

Marketers should take a proactive approach to clearly articulate their core business metrics and target audience, so they can fully tap the power of programmatic. Key to this is understanding the type of data being used in their programmatic strategy.