On the media agency side of the business, there is a small group of people who have been deep into the evolution of programmatic advertising. Anagram general manager Jenna Umbrianna is one of them. Starting as an analyst at Hill Holliday, Umbrianna managed the agency’s programmatic media practice in 2010 and eventually became the svp and general manager of Havas’ programmatic strategy and trading divisions across the holding company’s North American client roster. Arriving at Anagram in September 2017 as chief client officer, Umbrianna helped more than double client investment and facilitated formal partnerships with six major technology companies, growing the agency’s offering from primarily display programmatic to fully cross-channel programmatic. In April, she was elevated to general manager. “Jenna has been a force of innovation throughout her career,” says Joe Zawadzki, CEO of MediaMath.
“She was an early adopter of technology-enabled, data-driven marketing in digital, and has been indefatigable ever since. What Jenna accomplishes is extraordinary.” Looking ahead, Umbrianna sees the ability to get data via walled gardens (from the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google) as a continuing challenge. “It’s hard to get a complete view of an end-to-end consumer journey if you’ve got some big blind spots,” she says. But Anagram’s methodology, which includes in-depth surveying for additional consumer insight, has helped close the data gap and is a boon for the agency’s clients, including one in the travel space that elevated the agency from a U.S.-centric to a global footprint. “When you make that shift from being on somebody’s roster to someone they trust enough that you’re an extension of their team,” says Umbrianna, “that’s always the most rewarding for me.” —D.Z.
Cheryl jumped in first and talked about the excitement that she and her team at Signal Theory have around the advancements being made in programmatic TV, specifically leveraging OTT platforms through 
Although budgets are continuously shifting to be more digitally-focused, Cheryl underscored that you can’t put everything into digital and need to have a robust media mix. The Signal Theory media planning team decides what forms of media they’ll run on through thorough research of their clients’ customers’ behavior. Their planners are channel agnostic and both plan and buy for the client to provide a holistic view of the campaign from start to finish. Paige said that her team members work similarly. Everything is planned around campaign goals and they often set up flowcharts broken out by video for example, where digital video, broadcast, and other mediums are all included together rather than divided out by traditional and digital. For Walt, traditional and digital have merged together based on where they can best reach different target audiences. With the rise of cord cutting and 
A commonality in the responses from each panelist was that there’s generally a want from both the advertiser and the agency to have the brand’s first party data shared, however, clients don’t know how to handle their data or aren’t fully equipped to do so. In these instances, Cheryl’s team pulls in members of their analytics team to explain to their account managers what reporting and insights will look like based on the data to which they do have access. If CRM data or an email list can be shared that’s most helpful, but otherwise Paige and her colleagues at Slingshot will use second or third party data to make their campaigns as smart as possible, customizing targeting and messaging to reach customers in a more personalized and relevant way.
Given the multifaceted nature of the campaigns that agencies are taking on in 2019, all of the panelists emphasized that it’s difficult to determine what they can promise to deliver to their clients beyond awareness. Despite some clients asking to receive guaranteed lifts in sales, Cheryl and Walt both said that they instead establish front end benchmarks for KPIs that they determine by referencing industry research or historical data from previous campaigns. Although it’s a challenging conversation to have with the client, it’s essential to be transparent. Paige mentioned that benchmarks can vary greatly depending on vertical, market size, and other factors, so rather than guaranteeing a precise number of people moving into homes, like a 
Boston – November 1, 2018
As the year comes to a close, consumers hold a positive economic outlook and plan to express their optimism by spending their disposable income. 
As consumers look where to purchase gifts, online shoppers have made their preference for Amazon clear. 2017 was a huge year for e-commerce giant, taking 4th place for US display ad buying and coming in as the number one e-retail provider for holiday shoppers. As of December 2017, Amazon reached over 183 million unique visitors a month according to 
For progressive advertising professionals, this is a welcomed opportunity (more on that later). Technology companies and developers benefit from this market evolution via an increased need for their solutions and services. Publishers, however, don’t have much of a choice in this regard. In order to encourage engagement, and minimize the deployment of inhibitive tools such as ad blockers, user experience must be a paramount consideration. Content providers that deliver optimal UX — which includes unobtrusive but effective advertising, such as native tactics — will win in the long run.
Like “digital” before it, programmatic will likely lose its specific designation over the next decade, and morph into a marketing channel line item or equivalent. But until it does, it will continue to be popular fodder for industry publications and conferences. And not without good reason. Most estimates peg the U.S. programmatic marketplace in the tens of billions of dollars annually, and growing in the double-digit range. eMarketer sizes the 
In Washington D.C., the organization’s 
Since 2010, the programmatic advertising category has steadily increased in prominence. Indeed, 
However, it’s not just on game day and during TV ad time that advertisers can cash in on the Super Bowl fanfare. As the 
