AdEd Insights & Innovations

Journal of Advertising Education

2019, Vol. 23(2) 100–108
My Experience in ! The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
Teaching Programmatic sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1098048219868976
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Hairong Li1

Abstract
This article describes how a programmatic advertising course was developed and
taught for undergraduate students. Depending on the resources available when the
course was offered each time, different approaches were taken, which were the
client–agency approach, consulting approach, and custom learning approach.
The course content consisted of seven units: introduction to programmatic, pro-
grammatic ecosystem, programmatic creative, programmatic process, programmatic
measurement, programmatic optimization, and programmatic future. Each unit is
briefly summarized in the article, along with a sketch of course materials and final
thoughts on teaching the course in the future.

Keywords
interactive/digital, Internet/Web/digital/online, media planning, programmatic adver-
tising, real-time bidding

Programmatic advertising refers to digital advertising that is sold and bought

automatically using software, data, and algorithms (Interactive Advertising
Bureau [IAB], 2014). Programmatic advertising has evolved rapidly in recent
years and has penetrated considerably into most types of digital advertising,
such as display, video, native, search, social, and mobile advertising.
According to Magna (Mandese, 2018), programmatic spending was estimated
to account for 65% of total digital advertising spending in the United States in

1
Michigan State University, MI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Hairong Li, Professor of Advertising, Michigan State University, 404 Wilson Road, Rm 309 , East Lansing,
MI 48824, USA.
Email: hairong@msu.edu
Li 101

2018, and that percentage was projected to increase to 84% in 2022. With the
rise of connected TV, programmatic buying in TV commercials is growing fast
(Taylor, 2019). As the trend continues, it is important for advertising students to
master the knowledge and skills related to programmatic advertising.
I started introducing some concepts of real-time bidding (the early and still
primary form of programmatic buying) in my interactive advertising course right
after IAB UK (2012) released a video on the evolution of online display adver-
tising. This video covered many concepts, such as ad network, ad exchange,
demand-side platform (DSP), supply-side platform (SSP), and agency trading
desk (ATD). They are all key players in the programmatic ecosystem, although
newer players such as data management platform (DMP), creative management
platform (CMP), and ad verification services (AVSs) have since emerged.
A new course on programmatic advertising was proposed in our recent curric-
ulum revision, and the course became official in the summer of 2017. I developed
and taught the course in the spring of 2018 for the first time. I revised the course and
taught it again in the spring of 2019. To meet the needs of graduating students, I
taught it online in the summer of 2019. I have taken different approaches to teach-
ing the course, both in the classroom and online, and I also continue to update the
course with new information from academic and trade publications, interactions
with industry professionals, and feedback from my students. Our department pro-
vided financial support for me to obtain necessary industry expertise, and my
colleagues shared their connections with me. All of this was essential for course
development. I have learned a great deal from teaching the programmatic adver-
tising course over the past 2 years, and I have some experiences to share.

Course Approaches
When I first taught the course, my goals were for students to not only under-
stand the programmatic ecosystem, the roles of major players, and best practices
in programmatic buying but also get hands-on experience in executing program-
matic buying. The goals were similar to those when I taught Google AdWords
(now Google Ads Search), where students joined the Google Online Marketing
Challenge and developed and executed search advertising campaigns for local
clients with a budget of $200 (later $250) from Google. Students were excited to
see real-time campaign metrics and to optimize the campaign for better out-
comes. I thought it would be ideal for students to carry out programmatic
buying on the dashboard of a DSP. I secured a client with a budget of $5,000
and an agency that had managed many successful programmatic campaigns.
The agency happened to use the Trade Desk, which is one of the largest inde-
pendent DSPs, and its Trading Academy offered a certification program. As a
result of working with the agency, my students were each granted a complimen-
tary login to study video lessons and earn certificates. At any rate, we had good
partners to kick off the new course.
102 Journal of Advertising Education 23(2)

Client–agency approach
During the course, students worked in teams of three or four to develop executable
campaign plans, including the campaign objectives, target audience, multiple sets of
display ads, initial budget allocation across platforms, and key performance indi-
cators (KPIs) and metrics. Student teams also developed tagging plans for mea-
surement, conversion tracking, and bid weighting in collaboration with the client’s
webmaster. The client came to brief my class, and students presented their plans to
the client and the agency’s programmatic director for feedback. The best plan was
selected and then revised by the agency before activation. It turned out that the
agency could not give us access to the DSP dashboard because it was running live
campaigns for their clients; instead they managed programmatic buying and opti-
mization on our behalf. In the middle and at the end of the campaign, the pro-
grammatic director shared progress, adjustments, and final outcomes with students
via video conferencing and in the classroom. I selected articles and cases from
WARC, a leading database of advertising and marketing information, for students
to study for programmatic campaign development. In addition, students watched
the video lessons from the Trading Academy to earn certificates. This client–agency
approach worked well in that students actively learned about programmatic adver-
tising though working with the client and agency professionals.

Consulting approach
Before offering the course for the second time, I noticed that consulting firms
were helping many companies establish their own capability to carry out pro-
grammatic buying internally in partnership with specialized services. IAB (2018)
published a report on in-house programmatic and related issues. I thought it
would be beneficial for students to get a big picture of where programmatic
advertising is going. To this end, I took a consulting approach to teaching the
course in that students were required to think and work as “consulting teams.”
In addition to the development of a programmatic campaign plan as before,
they were required to first complete a business plan for a hotel chain of their
choice (e.g., Hilton, IHG, Marriott) to establish a hybrid structure, where some
programmatic functions would be insourced and others would be outsourced.
Both types of programmatic functions, potential outsource partners and selec-
tion criteria, and the workflow of the hybrid structure would be included in the
business plan. In-depth research was necessary because all company information
had to be real, including the profiles of recommended partner companies. To
add new perspectives to the course, I secured four guest lectures by Michigan
State University (MSU) alumni working in programmatic advertising in Detroit
and New York. These guest lectures were arranged so that each guest would talk
about an issue that was related to the course projects, and students found
answers to many questions from these professionals. In addition, the career
Li 103

paths of these alumni were equally interesting to many students, as they saw
firsthand how MSU graduates have become accomplished advertising execu-
tives. Near the end of the semester, a few students told me that they already
landed a full-time job or a summer internship in programmatic advertising, and
another student told me she would continue her graduate study in business
analytics partly because of taking the programmatic course. Nothing is more
rewarding than seeing the impact of a course on students.

Custom learning approach

When the course was offered online in the summer of 2019, I took a custom
learning approach. There were no team projects because students were off
campus and could not easily collaborate on team projects. I chose to have
them work individually. The major assignment for each unit was an essay, for
which students could select any three issues they thought were most important
based on the lectures, assigned articles and cases, and certificate video lessons.
A quality essay was defined as an analytical piece that blended key concepts
from the course materials with the student’s own thinking, with at least three
references. Grading criteria included issue selection, key concepts, individual
thought, and writing quality. Studying for the certificate video lessons allowed
students to learn the viewpoints of professionals on various aspects of program-
matic advertising and best practices, whereas the essays helped students form
their own perspectives on major issues. This approach seemed to work well
in that it promoted custom learning for individual students. Even if several
students explored the same issue in their essays, each analysis was quite
unique. Such a custom learning approach certainly needed more commitment
from students to achieve the best learning outcomes, especially in the summer.

Course Content
The summer course represented my latest appreciation of the content a pro-
grammatic advertising course for undergraduate students should cover. It con-
sisted of seven units: introduction to programmatic, programmatic ecosystem,
programmatic creative, programmatic process, programmatic measurement,
programmatic optimization, and programmatic future. Each unit covered sev-
eral issues and integrated industry situations, professional perspectives, and best
practices. The following text contains highlights of these units.

Introduction to programmatic unit

It compared the differences between programmatic media buying and program-
matic advertising, reviewed the evolution of display advertising and the gradual
formation of the programmatic ecosystem, and examined the levels of program-
matic adoption in different types of digital advertising. A review of the short
104 Journal of Advertising Education 23(2)

history and current status of programmatic advertising helped students settle in

for further exploration.

Programmatic ecosystem unit

This unit explored the mechanism of programmatic buying, including real-time
bidding, major players and their roles, and additional transaction types (e.g.,
automated guaranteed, unreserved fixed rate, invitation-only auction, and
header bidding). Major players included publishers, SSPs, ad servers, ad
exchanges, ad networks, DSPs, DMPs, ATDs, and AVSs. Super DSPs like
Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform, Facebook Ad Manager, and
Amazon DSP were also covered as they own and operate (O&O) advertising
inventory on their platforms, as opposed to typical DSPs that do not own
advertising inventory. Programmatic ecosystem is very complex and ever chang-
ing and thus is always a challenging course topic.

Programmatic creative unit

Programmatic creative was made a unit partially because of students’ interest.
Unlike conventional campaigns, where most ads are created in advance, pro-
grammatic advertising allows the campaign to serve personalized ads to indi-
viduals and households. This unit reviewed early literature on the use of genetic
algorithms to design banner advertising in the early 2000s, creative management
platforms (CMPs) and dynamic creative optimization (DCO), and the use of
artificial intelligence (AI) in recommendations as ads. CMPs store and deliver
predesigned multiple ads per target specifications at scale, whereas in DCO,
digital assets (i.e., ad elements) are assembled, reassembled, and delivered in
real time based on consumer information and feedback. Relevant privacy
issues were explored to promote the proper use of creative techniques.

Programmatic process unit

It examined the six steps of a programmatic campaign: planning, integration,
safeguarding, activation, measurement, and optimization. Planning covered
decision-making on campaign objectives, target audience, targeting methods,
media platforms, and ad formats. These decisions would affect which program-
matic players (e.g., DSP, DMP, ATD) were selected to establish a local system
to carry out the campaign, which was detailed in the step of integration.
Safeguarding was made a separate step because of the importance of selecting
brand safety and ad verification services. Activation dealt with the issue of the
readiness to launch the campaign, including the collection of necessary data.
Measurement and optimization were the last two steps of the programmatic
process but were covered in separate units because of the large amount of
Li 105

content. This unit emphasized that the programmatic process was not necessar-
ily linear because some steps might be iterated or taken out of the sequence.

Programmatic measurement unit

This unit emphasized that while measurement will not start until a campaign is
launched, what is to be measured must be defined prior to the launch of the
campaign. This is because the item to measure may require specialized location
data vendors, as in a case where location data is essential for a mobile adver-
tising campaign. This unit also examined campaign objectives, KPIs, and met-
rics, and stressed that all KPIs are metrics but not all metrics are KPIs for a
given campaign. Basic concepts covered in this unit were benchmarks and
thresholds, macro and micro conversions, conversion tracking and conversion
rate, attribution models, data types (first-, second-, and third-party data), and
use of online and off-line data.

Programmatic optimization unit

Programmatic optimization refers to the practice of implementing the insights from
programmatic measurement to improve an ongoing campaign. The beauty of pro-
grammatic advertising is that the advertising and its agency specialists can tweak
almost every aspect of an ongoing campaign, any way they like, in light of their
interpretation of key metrics. This unit covered major aspects of optimization,
including audience, location, platform, device, inventory, and safety. For example,
audience optimization can be implemented a couple of weeks after the campaign is
activated and responsive audience members are known. The composition of
responsive audience members can be analyzed, and the lookalike modeling may
be used to identify new segments to broaden the coverage of the campaign.
Effective frequency can also be estimated and used to cap the frequency of ad
views, especially to optimize the message weight of cross-media campaigns.

Programmatic future unit

This was the last unit of the course. It is important for students to understand
that programmatic advertising is relatively new and not without problems. This
unit focused primarily on three top challenges: tech tax for publishers, ad fraud
for advertisers, and annoying ads for consumers. The seriousness of these chal-
lenges was demonstrated with the latest statistics, ongoing trade efforts were
reviewed, and future solutions were explored. For example, blockchain was
introduced as a technology that allows people who do not know each other
to trust a shared record of events. It has the potential to interrupt or even
displace the existing programmatic ecosystem by reducing or eliminating
many intermediaries in the buying process. Also, this unit looked at how AI
is being integrated in programmatic advertising to mitigate the levels of
106 Journal of Advertising Education 23(2)

annoying ads. All of the discussion helped students see a better future for digital
advertising with newer technologies and higher standards.

Course Materials
Materials for the course included a textbook, articles and cases from WARC,
and video lessons for certificates from the Trading Academy. The textbook I
recommended to students was Programmatic Advertising: The Successful
Transformation to Automated, Data-Driven Marketing in Real-Time (Busch,
2016). It consisted of 22 chapters authored by professionals and academics
and covered a wide range of issues. Required course materials included articles
and cases from WARC, and each of the seven units listed five articles and one
case for students to read. Most of the articles and cases were published within
the past 2 years. Other required materials were video lessons from the Trading
Academy, which were largely interviews of professionals on various program-
matic issues. Thanks to the generosity of the Trade Desk, our students were able
to get complimentary access to these video lessons. After students completed
watching all the video lessons for a certificate, which lasted 3 to 5 hours, and
passed an exam (with 80% correct answers), they earned a certificate in pro-
grammatic advertising. As of the summer of 2019, five certificates were avail-
able, including Professional, Practitioner, Specialist, Strategist, and Connected
TV. My students were required to earn all the certificates for the course. The
diverse course materials enabled students to digest, select, and integrate to form
their own knowledge and nurture their new interest in digital advertising.

Final Thoughts
The programmatic advertising course provided interested students with much-
needed knowledge and skills in one of the fastest growing areas of digital adver-
tising. As programmatic buying has transformed the way digital advertising is
sold and bought, its impact has gone beyond buying itself to shape the practice of
digital advertising planning, the structure and functions of advertising agencies,
and the relationship between clients and their advertising partners. In this sense,
all advertising students should have some exposure to the topic of programmatic
advertising, even if they do not take a programmatic advertising course.
The programmatic advertising course made a nice addition to my undergrad-
uate teaching portfolio. My research interest has been in digital advertising
issues since 1994 when the first banner ad appeared on the HotWired website,
and I have taught interactive advertising courses since 1998. I have also taught a
web analytics course that explores the effective use of Google Analytics, a pow-
erful tool I first adopted in 2006 for the Journal of Interactive Advertising that I
cofounded (Leckenby & Li, 2000). The three courses covering interactive adver-
tising, web analytics, and programmatic advertising supplement each other in
Li 107

terms of subjects, and in combination they cover many important aspects of

digital advertising in adequate depth.
No doubt, these courses need to keep bringing the latest theories and best
practices into the classroom. The reality is that inventive technologists and cre-
ative advertisers always find better ways to meet the needs and wants of con-
sumers in a competitive marketplace. For our students to have a successful
career in the ever-changing business of advertising, our curriculum must keep
abreast of industry advances and new research findings and explore the next
wave of innovation in brand communications.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Supplemental Material
Supplemental materials are available online with this article on Figshare.

References
Busch, O. (2016). Programmatic Advertising: The Successful Transformation to
Automated, Data-Driven Marketing in Real-Time. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
IAB (2014). Programmatic everywhere? Data, technology and the future of audience
engagement. Retrieved from https://www.iab.com/insights/programmatic-every
where-data-technology-and-the-future-of-audience-engagement/
IAB (2018). Programmatic in-housing: Benefits, challenges and key steps to building
internal capabilities. Retrieved from https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/
05/IAB_Programmatic-In-Housing-Whitepaper_v5.pdf
IAB UK (2012). The evolution of online display advertising. Retrieved from https://
youtu.be/1C0n_9DOlwE
Leckenby, J., & Li, H. (2000). Why we need the journal of interactive advertising. Journal
of Interactive Advertising, 1(1), 1–3.
Mandese, J. (2018). Magna revises programmatic ad forecast slightly upward.
MediaPost. Retrieved from https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/326563/
magna-revises-programmatic-ad-forecast-slightly-up.html
Taylor, C. (2019). Addressable TV is creating new advertising capabilities . . . And they
are not going away. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesrtay
lor/2019/03/18/addressable-tv-is-creating-new-advertising-capabilities-and-they-are-
not-going-away/
108 Journal of Advertising Education 23(2)