What is Programmatic Advertising (PA):
Programmatic advertising tools use complex analysis, forecasting, and regression algorithms to crunch millions of data points to find trends within certain customer groups. Once trends or behavioral patterns have been identified, the tool serves and optimizes content to your ideal audience in real time. As new data continues to be logged, your programmatic advertising spend will adjust accordingly so your advertising dollars are always being spent in the most efficient and effective way possible. Demand software using programmatic advertising input can bid on and serve everything from display advertisements, to social media ads, to videos, and retargeting campaigns. We’ll give that an A+ for mathematics application.

So, What’s in This for My Customers?:

Because PA platforms can track customer behavior, demographics, cross-channel activities, interests, and trends, you are only serving content that is of real interest to your ideal customer base. Programmatic advertising can also optimize content placement based on day, time, geography, and seasonality so your campaigns will reach your audience when they want or need it. That’s right, we said your ads could be both specific and timely. Trust us – your customers will thank you later when they are clicking on your content rather than closing it out.  

And, What’s in This for Me?:

It might go without saying but: the harder your ads work for you — i.e. the more efficient and relevant they are to your customers — the more likely it is they will yield sales. A strong PA program also frees up your team to focus on other initiatives, such as generating killer content or building other areas of your cross-channel marketing strategy. Instead of wasting time haggling over bulk ad buys, trying to analyze your display placement mix, or negotiating with media vendors, PA software does this for you.

Getting Started:

Programmatic advertising isn’t just for “big corporations.” If the IDC’s adoption rate tells you anything, it’s that PA is a universal tool that can benefit any industry, any type of business, and any size operation. With that said, setting up a program that’s tailored to your needs can feel a little daunting if you don’t have an established analytics team. In fact, unless you already have an in-house team who has worked with programmatic advertising in the past, the quickest path to success is partnering with an agency who can get you started. Setting up your PA parameters is the hard part — the software will take care of the rest. To make this easy, your agency will help you define a budget and cross check your content to ensure your first ad bids, and subsequent optimization efforts, are successful and ready to scale for success. When you’re just starting, you will set clear, measurable goals and work with your agency to understand the expected return on investment of a certain bid so you know exactly what you’re getting. Even though PA alleviates a lot of planning pain for your team, it’s important to track and optimize everything … including your optimization efforts. We’re here to help.

Learn more about all the data tools our team recommends and how you can harness the wealth of information customers are freely and happily giving to make content more interesting and engaging than ever before. On our website you can explore our services, read case studies, and get a preliminary evaluation about how programmatic advertising could transform your digital presence today.