Programmatic Advertising as a Data-Driven Information System: Personalization, Automation, and Managerial Challenges

Advances in digital technologies have significantly transformed the ways in which advertising activities are planned, purchased, targeted, and evaluated. Programmatic advertising, one of the prominent applications of this transformation, is a system based on the real-time buying and selling of advertising inventory through data, algorithms, and automation technologies. The development of programmatic advertising extends beyond the automation of advertising purchasing processes, giving rise to a multidimensional structure that involves the processing of user data, identification of target audiences, personalization of advertising content, and algorithmic decision-making. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the conceptual and technological structure of programmatic advertising and to evaluate it from a Management Information Systems perspective. To this end, the chapter first examines the transformation of digital advertising toward programmatic advertising, followed by an analysis of its core components, personalization and targeting strategies, benefits, and associated risks. Finally, programmatic advertising is evaluated within the MIS context through the dimensions of data management, decision support systems, algorithmic decision-making, data quality, transparency, accountability, and information security. The discussion presented in this chapter suggests that programmatic advertising should be understood not merely as a digital marketing or advertising purchasing method, but as a sociotechnical information system shaped by the interaction between technological and managerial elements.