According to eMarketer, programmatic advertising will account for 91.3% of U.S. digital display ad spend this year, or a total of $157.35 billion, per its December 2023 forecast.
Programmatic advertising is vital for brands to effectively target audiences with precision. Developing a programmatic strategy allows marketers to maximize their ad spend and achieve better results by automating the buying process and leveraging real-time data. Its success lies in its ability to enhance targeting and deliver measurable outcomes across various platforms.
With programmatic advertising, marketers can precisely target audiences of specific criteria, such as demographics, online web behavior, or consumer interests. This means that the right ads reach the right people, increasing engagement and customer conversions.
Using automated systems for buying and managing ad spaces streamlines the placement process to fulfill these requests. This means increased efficiency, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects that can’t be automated.
An automated approach also increases reach and frequency without extra effort or resources. Campaigns tap into a wide range of ad inventory across various publishers and networks while ensuring users are exposed to content without overdoing it.
Programmatic advertising provides real-time data and insights, letting you scale campaigns up or down and alter them based on performance metrics. This flexibility helps advertisers allocate their budget effectively while simultaneously expanding their campaign across multiple platforms, from mobile devices to traditional desktops or televisions.
Using real-time bidding enables you to bid on inventory on a per-impression basis, leading to more cost-effective ad placements than traditional approaches, where ad space is purchased at a fixed rate.
Programmatic advertising involves multiple components that work together to streamline the digital ad buying and selling process.
The demand-side platform (DSP) allows advertisers to bid on ad space across multiple interfaces while facilitating bid management in real time, targeting the correct audiences, and optimizing campaign functions.
The supply-side platform (SSP) is the next key component. It allows publishers to manage and sell their inventory by connecting ad exchanges and DSPs to maximize profit revenue.
Data management platforms are the next critical component of programmatic advertising. They provide insights into audience behavior and preferences, enabling personalized ads for the target audiences by collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources. This helps you determine the success of a campaign using metrics like clicks, conversions, and return on investment (ROI).
Once a campaign is live, ad verification and fraud prevention tools detect and stop issues such as fraudulent ads, viewing problems, and compliance concerns.
Real-time bidding takes place behind the scenes when a digital ad emerges on a consumer’s device. Once the user visits a website or app, an organization has the opportunity to display their ad. Each ad impression created by visiting a website is a chance to advertise to that user.
That ad space is instantly auctioned on an ad exchange or SSP. The SSP then sends a bid request to potential buyers, including data about the user’s demographic, browsing habits, and background information on the website or app.
On the other hand, DSPs receive and analyze the data to decide how much they are willing to pay for the ad space based on their budget and desired audience. Once the DSP places its bid, the ad exchange executes the auction and selects the highest bid. The ad is then instantly displayed to the user, and the advertiser is charged the winning bid amount. The technology and automated nature of this interaction allow it to happen in milliseconds, allowing for a seamless experience.
The presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in most industries has been on the rise, and digital marketing is no exception. AI improves targeting and personalizes the ad messages to accurately reach the correct audience.
AI also streamlines the bidding process. It allows for real-time automated adjustments to make the targeted ads more effective by testing different ad creatives to see which variations perform best. AI helps you by automating and improving programmatic ad strategy, and it also improves the user experience by only providing contextually relevant ads, increasing the chances of success with the target demographic.
When launching an advertising campaign, first outline the goals. Marketers should map out what programmatic strategy would accomplish, from boosting website traffic and increasing brand awareness to creating conversions and new customer acquisition.
Leaning into real-time bidding significantly improves programmatic campaigns, as ads can be purchased in milliseconds. Similarly, bid optimization helps advertisers improve their bidding performance by leveraging data and analytics to adjust bids for every impression, which increases the chances of winning ad auctions and having those ads showcased to more viewers. Incorporating elements like users’ location and device, previous browsing history, and demographics can create more targeted campaigns that deliver impressive results.
Various approaches to targeting audiences have proven effective in yielding results, such as behavioral, contextual, demographic, and lookalike targeting.
Behavioral targeting selects consumers based on their previous web behaviors and online activity—this way, you can curate ads based on the data from web analytics to increase relevance.
Contextual targeting relies on the content and context of the website on which the ad will be displayed. Ads are matched with website topics to ensure contextual relevance.
Demographic targeting focuses on attributes such as age, gender, income, education level, and occupation to provide users with relevant ads, which increases the likelihood of conversion.
Lookalike targeting matches users who resemble an advertiser’s current customer base to prospective customers with similar interests in order to best pair relevant ads with interested customers.
Retargeting is commonly included in programmatic ad strategies as it displays ads to those who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand. Some common forms of retargeting include site retargeting, which targets users who have previously visited the intended website but did not convert into customers. This is done via pixels placed on websites to collect visitor data and display those ads to users as they browse other sites.
Similarly, search retargeting focuses on individuals who have searched for specific keywords related to your brand. Users who have shown intent through their search behavior are retargeted with relevant ads to turn curiosity into conversions.
Marketers must use analytics and reporting tools to consistently improve advertising campaigns. Setting clear KPIs provides objective performance tracking while the ads are live.
Additionally, have dashboards and alerts to monitor real-time data to ensure your campaign is on the right track and can be edited as needed. Optimizing campaigns on the fly is one of the numerous strengths of programmatic advertising. Adjusting bids and changing targeting criteria or ad content based on real-time feedback and data can lead to more conversions overall.
Programmatic ad campaigns have transformed the ad industry, but challenges still arise during campaign execution. Data privacy and compliance are common concerns because your strategy must adhere to data protection regulations and consider consumer consent.
However, if your campaigns keep up with the latest regulations, implement consent management fail-safes, and anonymize data when possible, privacy isn’t an obstacle for programmatic ads. Leveraging brand safety tools is another way to avoid issues since it prevents an ad from airing on a website or platform that doesn’t align with the brand’s values.
Launching a strong campaign starts with selecting the right advertising platform. The top platforms provide the best possible user experience and targeting tactics. They integrate sophisticated tools for managing and measuring campaigns to help you efficiently reach your desired audience and dynamically adapt strategy.
Google Ads offers comprehensive capabilities for programmatic marketing, allowing advertisers to automate and optimize their ad placements across Google’s network.
By using Google's advanced targeting options, such as audience insights and contextual relevance, businesses can efficiently reach their desired audiences.
The platform's programmatic tools enable dynamic bidding strategies and real-time adjustments, ensuring ads are shown to the right users at the right time. This approach enhances campaign effectiveness and provides detailed feedback to continuously refine and improve advertising strategies.
The Adobe Advertising Cloud combines media planning, buying, and analytics into a single, user-friendly platform that leverages Adobe’s extensive data and analytics capabilities while still emphasizing creative optimization. Designed to manage large-scale campaigns, the Adobe advertising platform handles extensive data produced by numerous ad formats. The comprehensive training resources and customer support that accompany the sophisticated tools ensure that users are able to utilize the platform to the full extent.
AdRoll’s programmatic platform is known for targeted branding and retargeting strategies. By leveraging display ads to reach new audiences and reconnecting with previous visitors, our platform increases click-through rates (CTR) and conversions. AdRoll uses unique features to power campaigns, such as BidIQ, an AI-powered feature that ensures bids are placed optimally and within budget. AdRoll gives accurate predictions of campaign performance through its all-in-one dashboard, which makes analyzing KPIs simple.
To make the right choice for your campaigns, a good place to start is with each platform’s reach. Some campaigns may just seek the widest reach possible, while others might look to target specific demographics and may not focus as much on the general public.
Determining which type of device is best for the campaign can help narrow down the best-fit platforms for any specific campaign. Checking if the selected platform can provide the flexibility to advertise on desktop, mobile, and other devices simplifies the campaign planning and content creating process.
A platform’s data analysis tools and support system are also important considerations. Platforms that track information in real time with data visualization features are ideal for new campaigns that have yet to receive feedback. A responsive customer service platform often comes with a higher price tag. Analyzing whether that’s in the budget and a priority for each specific campaign will help match the campaign to the right platform.
While AI is currently the biggest trend impacting programmatic advertising, others, like stricter data privacy regulations and connected television (CTV), are also making waves in the industry.
With CTV, advertisers can deliver personalized content by connecting to the internet and accessing popular apps like Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, or even Spotify. As of this year, most platforms have introduced ad-supported packages, which have become increasingly popular, with the number of subscriptions with ads surpassing premium subscriptions without ads. Launching campaigns on these platforms will allow the potential to reach millions of viewers, particularly demographics like millennials and Gen Z, who lean into personalized viewing experiences more than other generations.
Stricter data privacy regulations are also becoming the norm. Advertising platforms will need to adjust to new consent solutions and offer adjusted privacy features to match the new data protection regulations. You’ll need to choose a platform that keeps up-to-date with the latest regulations and uses first-party data to run effective campaigns.
Programmatic advertising is one of the most powerful tools when launching a campaign. Programmatic strategy is the future of the advertising industry. With AdRoll, you can run programmatic ads on hundreds of premium ad networks. The platform’s database of over 1.2 billion internet users have already found and targeted their ideal audiences. Don’t wait any longer — get started today!
Last updated on September 16th, 2024.