If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you’re not going to understand the world of programmatic advertising. That said, understanding how programmatic advertising works doesn’t have to be difficult. Understanding how can programmatic advertising improve digital marketing results, is of course essential for marketers in 2022.
In a nutshell, programmatic advertising is the real-time automated purchase of online ad space using data to target the right person at the right time. It eliminates the need for time-consuming manual processes, giving humans more time to refine their programmatic campaigns and provide advertisers with better results. Read on to learn more about the advantages of programmatic advertising and why you should include it in your media mix.
How programmatic advertising works
1. Small and mid-sized businesses
First and foremost, it would be irresponsible to discuss all of the strange and amazing things brands can do with programmatic advertising without dispelling the misconception that you need unlimited sums of money to get started. The benefit of real-time, audience-focused programmatic buying is that we get significantly less waste and a lot more bang for our cash. So, even if you don’t have a lot of money to play with or want to give programmatic a chance to establish itself before spending more, there will be an approach for you.
2. The reach of programmatic advertising is enormous.
No one has ever said, “I don’t want to reach as much of my target audience as possible.” We can all agree that the most effective forms of advertising reach a large number of people. That is exactly what programmatic advertising allows us to do. Programmatic advertising gives you access to ad space on millions of websites, allowing you to find and engage your target audience wherever they are (almost).
3. You’re in command
One of the most valuable advantages of programmatic advertising is the ability for brands to halt and adjust campaigns in the middle of their execution. From a performance standpoint, it enables upweighting of the best-performing audiences, sites, times of day, and so on, assisting in the ongoing improvement of outcomes. Plus, in the event that a brand’s website goes down, it allows them to get out of jail free and cease paying to send their audience to a dead page in an instant. What a fantasy.
4. You can use unconventional forms to promote your business
The days of click-focused banner advertising being the only format associated with programmatic are long gone. Brands may now engage their audience with highly interactive digital creative units, lead them to stores using in-built maps, or just wow them with a beautifully designed web takeover format that can be bought and served in real-time on an individual user basis.
5. The possibilities for targeting are practically limitless
When you’re looking for a present for your SO’s birthday, do you ever feel like you’re being followed by an ad for the same product? We’ve all been in that situation. While retargeting is an important aspect of a brand’s programmatic strategy, there are numerous additional targeting tactics that may be used to locate and engage critical audiences.
These can be a little sexy, like overlaying previous purchase data via Mastercard, real-time and historic geo-location data, email data, Amazon purchase data, or household data, or they can be a little less sexy but still effective, like contextual targeting, which places the ad alongside relevant content.
6. You can use DOOH to sync your programmed activity (digital out-of-home billboards)
Consider the following scenario: you’re strolling down the street, it’s almost lunchtime. You pass by a billboard selling a delicious-looking burger (sorry, vegans), and it attracts your attention. You continue strolling while checking the weather on your phone. When you open the app, there’s the burger all over again. You give in to temptation and walk over to the renowned Golden Arches.
You’ve just witnessed a DOOH/programmatic sync that captures people as they pass by your OOH advertising and retargets them on their phone. A simple, yet highly effective method for increasing messaging frequency and impact on your audience.
7. Weather-triggered programmatic campaigns are possible
You can not only find the right person in the right place at the right moment, but you can also find them in the right weather. Weather signals are a great method to contextualise your brand’s content and gain instant credibility with your target audience. These triggers can be as basic as’sales increase when it rains,’ and can be based on brand insight. When these parameters are set in the programmatic buying platform, the budget can be automatically upweighted or the messaging can alter to become more relevant when desired weather circumstances occur.
8. You are aware of every single website where your brand appears
We no longer live in a world where programmatic campaigns are put up and delivered without any knowledge of where our ads are being displayed. No, no, no. Hello, transparency, and goodbye, black box. Brand safety and transparency are crucial when running over the open-exchange or a pre-agreed list of sites.
Brands can be guaranteed that they’re reaching their intended audience in entirely acceptable, brand-safe surroundings thanks to strong controls in place to exclude sites and content considered dangerous.
9. Programmatic advertising achieves a wide range of goals
Despite popular belief, we don’t utilise programmatic advertising solely to sell, sell, sell. Granted, it excels at this, but more and more brands are looking to programmatic to boost awareness and consideration as well.
Programmatic advertising has shown to be nothing to sneeze at when it comes to raising brand metrics, thanks to a brilliant blend of the correct targeting and, most importantly, well-executed content.
Are you inspired and ready to learn more about how programmatic advertising may benefit your business? Good. 1st Content Digital agency’s team of specialists will collaborate with you to create and execute a programmatic campaign that speaks to your target audience and achieves your goals. Whether you want to raise awareness of a product or service, increase traffic to your website, increase foot traffic to your store, or something else entirely, contact our team and we’ll take care of the rest.
If you need support and want to find out more about our digital marketing services – contact us for a free consultation wit a member of our team.