A Commpro News UpdateToday, Trusted Media Brands, Inc. released results from their latest survey looking at agency and marketer sentiment toward the importance of key elements in the digital buying process.  Commissioned by Advertiser Perceptions, the survey polled 300 agency and client side marketers about the programmatic digital buying process.The survey revealed that now, more than ever, marketers need brand safe environments that offer targeted audiences to ensure reliable and effective campaigns.Other survey highlights include key struggles participants have when buying ads programmatically. Results show that almost three-fourths of participants (73 percent) agree the ability to buy ads programmatically is important. Brand safety and site credibility showed to be even more important to participants – 81 percent of marketers reported a brand safe environment for advertising is a high priority. While it is a high priority, brand safety is also extremely challenging to guarantee – 71 percent of respondents say it’s difficult to ensure brand safe environments while buying programmatically on the open exchange.“Fake news, ad fraud and non-premium content has marketers rethinking where and how they place their digital ads,” said Rich Sutton, Trusted Media Brands’ chief revenue officer. “Premium publishers, like Trusted Media Brands, offer private marketplaces and guaranteed accuracy to ensure we are providing a trusted, brand safe environment for our clients and that they are targeting the right audiences.”Other key highlights from the survey include:

• Audience Matters Most. The factors most important to marketers when making their digital buying decisions are audience target delivery, viewability and brand safe environments. Over the next 12 months, half of all digital advertisers plan to increase their spending on audience data targeting.
• Accuracy and Relevancy Are Key. While audience target delivery is a top factor driving campaign effectiveness, ad creative and brand safe environments were also rated important by a majority of respondents.
• Transparency Wanted. Reaching the right audience topped the list of challenges among digital buyers, but transparency was also a common theme. More than half of the survey respondents say they don’t see programmatic transparency getting better. This is a possible roadblock for the burgeoning ad delivery technology.

Trusted Media Brands conducted this survey in January 2017 among 312 U.S. media decision makers from the Advertiser Perceptions Omnibus Panel. Of these participants, 299 are actively involved in media brand selection decisions for digital/mobile or TV advertising.