Hasta La Creative!

When Matt Prohaska joined The New York Times as its first-ever programmatic advertising director, he claims to have begun meetings by drawing blood from his arm. “I wanted to show everyone I was human,” he said.

There was no actual bloodshed. Mr. Prohaska, hired in April after running his own consultancy, was making a point about his last seven months educating the Times’ sales staff about programmatic buying. And part of that education is assuring them programmatic will not cannibalize their direct-sales commissions. “Some people are understandably concerned,” he said, referring to the industry at large. “They’re seeing programmatic numbers going up, and their own book of business going down.”

In fact, Times executives blamed a 3% decline in third-quarter digital-ad revenue partly on programmatic buying. This year, marketers are expected to spend $3.3 billion on display ads bought through real-time bidding, according to eMarketer, representing 19% of total digital ad spending. By 2017, it’s expected to reach $8.69 billion, or 29% of total digital dollars.

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