You couldn't be in Pay Per Click Advertising last year without having the word Programmatic continually dropped into seemingly every PPC blog post, white paper or conference session.



The momentum is only going to increase in 2017, with even more programmatic buzzwords (read: product offerings) like: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Deep Learning.



The rise of Programmatic in the online media buying space is inevitable however where does this leave us, the digital marketing specialist?

Adding it up

In Kevin Kelly's latest book, The Inevitable, he reminds us of the parallel of AI's first significant breakthrough – the first time a machine had ever beaten a human – when IBM's Deep Blue defeated Russian Chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997.



What were we to learn from this? Was the lesson that we should just roll over and give up to AI as soon it can beat us?



In the 20 years since he was defeated by AI, Kasparov himself has answered that question by inventing Freestyle Chess – a new format of gameplay where humans can also use a computer and therefore have access to the same intelligence as their computer opponent.



In his own words, Kasparov said: "I am promoting the idea of combining our forces, Man plus Machine decision making. The future belongs to human and computer cooperation."

Man vs Machine

Without a doubt, the advances in Programmatic will inevitably take away certain robotic roles from PPC – and thank God for this! It wouldn't be too soon for 99% of marketers if they didn't ever need to worry about ad networks, placements, CPMs, CPCs, CTRs, CPAs, you get the idea. 



The game for 2017 onwards is: 



How do we change so that this year, instead of competing with AI, we're releasing the computer to do what it should always have been doing for us?



And then how do we take a step up to do the part AI can't do and that is practically forgotten in every PPC blog post, white paper and conference session:



Not making better optimisations, but creating better advertising.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Sugihto is founder of specialist, Melbourne based Pay Per Click agency and Google Certified Partner, Intentional. Since 2009, the Intentional team have driven online advertising for companies in global markets such as Prague, Paris, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Bangkok, New York and LA; as well as being digital advisor and partner in the Australian domestic market for numerous household brands and NFPs.