The Role of Technology in Building a Competitive Advantage – Programmatic Buying and Its Impact on the Competitiveness of an Organization

Abstract Research background: Recent years have brought a real explosion of new tools and methods of conducting market activities based on new technologies. Solutions based on new technologies carry great development potential for an organization. There is a belief that new technologies – in particular, programmatic buying (analyzed in this article) – also impact an organization’s ability to compete. Programmatic buying (PB) is a tool but also a new model of sales and purchase of advertising, under which the current package approach (traditional) has been replaced by a fully automated individualized approach. Purpose: The aim of the article is to assess the impact of technology on an organization’s ability to compete with the example of PB. Research methodology: The empirical basis is both qualitative and quantitative research conducted in 2018–2019. Results: The empirical material provides the basis for rejecting the main research hypothesis which claims that the usage of PB increases the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising and thanks to this on a companies’ ability to compete. PB has a positive impact only on the effectiveness and efficiency of graphic ads. The same relation was not observed in terms of video ads. Nevertheless the results are not clear. It is recommended to deepen the analysis. Novelty: Due to the fact that programmatic buying is a relatively new technologic solution there is no research that proves its impact on the marketing activities efficiency as well as its role in building the competitive advantage of a company, especially on the Polish or European market. This research starts the discussion of the role of PB in companies’ market activities and fits in the dispute of the significance of new technologies.