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Programmatic Advertising

Driving your advertising performance through artificial intelligence.

We remove the silos to allow media buying across all channels to occur seamlessly and through one strategic lens, with programmatic and direct buying converged into a single function, and media performance measured and optimized holistically. 

Automated bidding on advertising inventory in real-time, for the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer, in a specific context.

When anyone clicks on a web page that has advertising space that is configured for programmatic advertising, the publisher of the page puts up an ad impression for auction in an ad marketplace. The ad marketplace then runs an auction among advertisers interested in displaying an ad to that specific customer that just click on the page. There may be many advertisers competing in this auction, and whichever one ultimately is willing to bid the most wins the auction and then their ad is displayed to the customer when the page loads.

Many small businesses aim to optimise their advertising and marketing expenses. Posting an advertisement to a broad audience is ultimately inefficient, as the target market of any business is a small subset of the broader population. Likewise, posting physical flyers around a university campus or other public area does not ensure that the target market will see the advertisement.

One solution is using an advertisement platform that allows for the specification of the target market.

Facebook, as an example, prompts advertisers to specify the demographic information, hobbies, and interests of the users who the advertisement will be displayed to. A small business producing specialty hiking equipment may choose to advertise to individuals in rural areas that are known for hiking locations. Such a business may designate hiking as one of the interests, and search for a younger demographic that has not already developed loyalties to certain outdoors brands. This scenario illustrates how crucial narrowing one’s target is in maximising the efficiency of advertising. Still, there are only so many active users on Facebook, and that number is subject to further decrease as other social media platforms become more prevalent.

There is, of course, a better solution to targeted advertising that can reach users who do not frequently use social media platforms where targeted ad spaces are offered. Programmatic advertising is an even more efficient means of responding to this challenge.

One form of programmatic advertising is real-time bidding, enabling advertisers to purchase relevant ad space within a few seconds.

Whenever an individual clicks a website with ad space that allows for programmatic advertisement, a bid for that ad space occurs on the ad marketplace. Thus, advertisers can autonomously out-bid their competitors to show advertisements to users who fall within their target audience.

Another form of programmatic advertising is programmatic direct. This form is slightly more manual than real-time bidding, as advertisers can hand-pick where their ads will appear.

They also know exactly what they will be paying, whereas the price advertisers who opt for the real-time bidding option will pay depends on the existing competition for the ad space, the customer, and the financial capabilities of the specific companies that are bidding for space.

The most obvious benefit of programmatic direct is that brands preserve their image by ensuring their advertisements are only displayed on websites aligned with their core values, beliefs, and essential purpose.

For instance, a brand that is selling electric vaporisers may not want to appear on a website hosted by a company that sells cigarettes, as electric vaporizer companies could be the primary competition for cigarette brands.

Another advantage is that a brand may see an increase in its revenue by having positive associations with a cause that many are passionate about.

Protecting the environment is one social issue that most agree on. Some brands have even seen success based on their environmental responsibility and goal to minimise all individuals’ carbon footprints alone. Tesla, a company that manufactures electric cars and solar panels, recently released an impact report that detailed both its overall carbon dioxide emissions and the carbon emissions that were saved as a result of the use of its electric cars.

Many brands have started to use recyclable and reusable packaging to appeal to environmentally conscious customers and to reduce their environmental impact. Plastic is a huge stressor on the environment that many companies insist on using, as it is durable and inexpensive when compared to its alternatives. Thus, a brand that boasts its environmental responsibility may want to use programmatic direct to appear on pages about the record carbon dioxide levels, or about various ocean cleanup efforts.

Aside from preserving a brand’s image and boosting their revenue by supporting popular causes, brands can also ensure their ads appear on pages that reflect their core values. This ties into the relevancy of the host website.

If a company’s core values are the promotion of health and peace of mind to the general public, that brand may prefer to appear on yoga and meditation websites that include similar messages in their “About” pages.

There are many advantages of programmatic advertising over the manual selection of advertisement space to purchase.

First, programs are not limited by the same physical needs that humans are, such as sleep, free time, and illness.

Another advantage is that businesses can spend less time on the process of finding relevant ad space and more time on the appearance and message of the ad itself. Graphic design is a time-consuming process; however, a graphic that is eye-catching and meaningful may be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful advertising campaign.

Another benefit is that businesses may be able to reduce the size of their marketing departments. Of course, humans still create advertisements and select the websites to advertise on if programmatic direct is chosen.

However, employers can save on the salaries and benefits of the employees who would have had to scrounge the Internet for websites with available advertisement space.

In the future, programmatic advertising may be used to sell television spots; it has applications in many industries that cannot be ignored.

Overall, both real-time bidding and programmatic direct are methods of programmatic advertising that will increase the efficiency of a business and maximise the number of potential customers a business can reach within the business’ designated advertising budget.

Real-time bidding is a completely automated method of bidding for and purchasing ad space, while programmatic direct allows advertisers to select the websites on which their ads will appear. Both forms of advertising allow businesses to target a specific user, instead of aiming to appeal to a general audience in the hopes that the target market will be represented in that audience.

For programmatic direct, businesses can choose to be associated with causes that are meaningful to them and their customers, while avoiding causes they do not support.

Though programmatic advertising may seem futuristic, it is relevant technology that small and large businesses should take full advantage of.

Programmatic advertising puts businesses in direct contact with individuals who could become loyal customers and facilitate the growth of the business through another powerful method of advertising: word of mouth.

Jane Cluff

Jane Cluff

Senior digital strategist

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