Digital Advertising (Specifically Programmatic) Industry has experienced a roller coaster 2016, from battle of Ad-blocker to publishers jumping into header-bidding bandwagon, to adtech players combating the duopoly of Facebook and Google. So what's in store for 2017? Here are our bets:

1. ROI of Programmatic will be getting scrutinized

Programmatic has always promise advertisers of delivering the right message, to right target, at the right time. But executing a programmatic tactics are never easy and I believe we are far from achieving it. As the glamour of programmatic hype wane in 2017 and move into mainstream, we will start to see advertisers questioning the ROI and performance of programmatic media:

•  Are we really reaching out to our target audience when we run 3rd Party Audience? 
• How can we perfrom cross-device attribution? 
• How can we truly measure brand-lift of branding campaign, rather than rely on metrics like time-spend.
• How are my programmatic media perform against the like of GDN, Facebook Ads or Search?

Programmatic advertising industry players need to start to think about these questions.

2. Emergence of Content Advertising

Every day, 2 millions blog posts are created. Every min, 300 hours of Youtube videos are uploaded. Creating compelling contents by brands are simply not enough to get attention. Brands need to amplify their contents to the right audience. And this is how content advertising emerge to be key component of content marketing: Branded Content, Sponsored Posts, Programmatic Native, these are some of content advertising tactics that will continue to grow, At the same time, as programmatic advertising continue to mature, we expect programmatic advertising players to move into content advertising space as well.

3. Creatives go programmatic

Creatives is the last in the Digital Advertising value chain that are yet to be disrupted. Leveraging data into creatives process as well as platform that allow A/B creatives testing through Dynamic Creatives Optimisation will continue to evolve. Advertisers will demand a simplified process in solving the creatives challenges, and leveraging on data and technology.

And if 2016 is the dawn of AI (highlighted by the defeat of Lee Sedol by Google's Alpha-Go), then 2017 will be the year we are seeing machine learning coming into creatives development.

4. Programmatic TV will still be in infant stage

There has been lots of hype in 2016 about Programmatic TV, but there are still many structural problems why programmatic TV will not happen.

• No one still has a definite answer of what programmatic TV really is.
• Big Traditional TV players are still making money going direct and often lack of inventory. Why should they move to programmatic?

5. We still have to deal with those jargons

Sorry folks. In 2017, nothing will change. We will still due with "programmatic direct", "PMP", "header bidding", "CMP".