Programmatic Marketing & Advertising
Programmatic marketing is the future of online advertising.
In fact, it’s already here – Google predicts that the majority of all digital advertising spend will be on programmatic, and this trend is set to continue in the future as well.
And that’s not surprising – programmatic media buying offers unique opportunities for businesses to take better control over how they spend their advertising budgets, allowing to automate processes and free up the time of marketers for more creative and less technical tasks.
But even though programmatic digital advertising offers many advantages, the main thing holding back the progress is a lack of knowledge on how to use it to its full potential.So, in this article, let’s have programmatic advertising explained so that you know exactly what is programmatic advertising and how it can help your company achieve its online marketing goals.
What is Programmatic Marketing?
The reason why some marketers are still hesitant about using programmatic advertising buying is that it’s not easy to understand the exact process behind it or even define what it is.
However, when boiled down to a single principle, programmatic ads don’t have to be complicated.
Programmatic marketing is the process of automating the bidding on advertisement spots in real time, enabling businesses to provide personalized content to hyper-targeted audiences and maximize the cost-effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.
In other words, instead of needing a real person to make proposals, find the right placement opportunities, and customize ads that are going to be displayed, programmatic marketing can help automate these tasks with the help of AI software solutions.
Since the task of buying ad inventory was traditionally labor-intensive, marketers had to spend a lot of time manually setting everything up, but with the help of programmatic media buying, they can now focus on improving the ads and developing new ideas.
Even though the algorithm is still not perfect, it has already shown enormous potential for marketers and is poised to completely revolutionize how we buy ads in the future.
How Does Programmatic Marketing Work?
The main principle behind programmatic marketing involves having much more control over how to show the right ad to the right customer, at the right time.
Using Artificial Intelligence technologies and various algorithms, you can automate the process of buying ad inventory, maximize the effectiveness of your ads using audience data gathered through cookies on your site or from third-party data providers, and ensure that your ads will be continuously optimized to ensure the best performance possible.
And real-time bidding (RTB) that’s used with programmatic advertising offers unparalleled opportunities to get the most relevant ads in front of your audience across multi-device and multi-network programmatic platforms, using various formats to ensure maximum reach and engagement.
Although there are still some concerns regarding the ad fraud and brand safety, the programming technology is making huge strides each year, and is now much more effective at preventing ads from being shown to fake traffic, as well as ensuring that the ads do not appear on websites that are not in-line with the brand’s values.
What Are the Advantages of Programmatic Marketing?
There’s a reason why programmatic advertising is becoming so popular – it offers a range of unique advantages that can help any company get the most out of their marketing budget. Since we already figured out what is programmatic buying, let’s explore some of the biggest reasons why you should consider it.
Cost-Effectiveness
One of the biggest benefits of programmatic technology is the unparalleled cost-effectiveness it can offer – the algorithm makes ad buying decisions in real time, allowing it to find you the best possible price for placements that are the most likely to generate the desired outcome.
You can make quick adjustments to your CPM as well, which helps ensure that your campaigns remain profitable while providing you with maximum reach.
Real-Time Data
Even though programmatic advertising makes purchases automatically, it collects and analyzes the data of the ad performance, optimizing your campaigns to make sure that your ads give you the biggest ROI.
However, the same data can be used by advertisers to make informed decisions about how to adjust the ads, helping companies make better decisions and provide more relevant messages to their target audience.
Increased Reach
One of the biggest advantages of online marketing was the ability to reach audiences that aren’t necessarily near your business location.
And with the help of programmatic marketing, your reach can increase even more – the diverse range of ad inventory that can be purchased enables companies to get in front of their audience on multiple platforms, discovering new opportunities for growth in the process.
Best Practices for Programmatic Marketing
Even though programmatic marketing is largely automated, that doesn’t mean that it works on autopilot – there are best practices and strategies that you must follow if you want to ensure good performance and achieve your goals.
The first thing you must figure out is who you are targeting – most platforms allow deep audience customization based on their interests, demographics, past behaviors, and even lookalikes.
You should also think about things like the platforms that you want to focus on or even the device, but if you don’t have hard data, you might just want to allow the algorithm to optimize for best performance.
Once you know who you want to reach, you need to identify what you want to achieve and establish the KPIs that you‘re going to be focusing on.
Generally, awareness ads work better for audiences that you haven‘t interacted before, and conversion ads work great for remarketing audiences that already know you and are more likely to be ready to buy, although you should evaluate based on your performance and specific situation.
Finally, to make sure that your ads remain successful in an online landscape where users are becoming more hostile towards traditional display ads, you need to consider combining the potential of programmatic marketing with the power of native advertising.
Today’s programmatic technology can shape ads to fit the layout and style of the publication, so you can combine the huge scaling and targeting potential that programmatic can offer together with the effectiveness of native.If you want to learn more about how you could combine both to achieve your online marketing goals, call us at +1 (866) 786-7944 or fill out a form here and we will help you figure out the best way to move forward.