Challenges in Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is the automated transaction of buying and selling advertising online. It’s the Process of using different platforms to sell inventory on publishing sites and the advertising side, purchase inventory and place ads on a publishers site. It used to be quite a manual process that involved requests for proposals (RFPs), human negotiations, and manual insertion orders. Nowadays, the whole transaction from beginning to end occurs in milliseconds and includes many different platforms. Still, there are a few channels which do the same through manual Process. Here I will be talking about the challenges in Programmatic Advertising.

Ad Fraud

It is an issue across all online display advertising. The entire online marketing industry revolves around impressions. How many views your ad gets, and clicks. Something every advertiser and publisher wants to combat: how do you know whether an actual person sees your ad?

Ad fraud is when these clicks and impressions come from a bot, rather than a human. It is the biggest problem programmatic advertising faces. It’s responsible for huge chunks of advertising budget resulting in no real results to show for it. Google itself has been working on ways to battle bots.

The other way for advertisers to combat this is through publishing their ads on reputable websites. Try to use publishers and networks they know and trust. In this case, the ad placements may cost you a little more. Try to avoid countries where the ad fraud rate is very high. You can check the list of countries here.

Lack of knowledge

Before selecting a Programmatic Network, go in detail about the platform you want to use. Ask the customer support, or the client servicing person or the ad analytics expert of the Network, the way their platforms work. Then you identify whether it will work for you or not.

Inventory Quality

E-Marketer predicts that programmatic ads will account for 83% of all display buys, which is a staggering figure. Most companies are working to ensure that your ad gets shown to the most relevant, interested audience. Even with so much corrupt or incompatible inventory out there! After all, it’s as beneficial for the DSP (Demand Side Platform) for your campaigns to be a success, as then you buy more from them, and recommend them to peers.

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