Programmatic Media Buying: A few tips on the platforms to use
Nader Aboulhosn
Startup Ecosystem Enabler | Founder-Backed Strategies to Scale Investor & Accelerator Portfolios
So the programmatic landscape is cluttered with offerings of all kinds designed to help you the consumer reach a wider audience and more targeted audience than you would through AdWords. Programmatic offers major advancements in Ad-serving and Ad-format technologies. These advancements though add layers of complexity to the ad buying process that most marketers, especially in the middle east, are simply unable to handle.
In this article, I will not go into the nitty-gritty of programmatic but I will be giving you a few tips on what to watch out for when selecting a DSP to use.
1: DSPs and Ad servers are two different things
There are amazing companies out there like SIZMEK who take ad-serving to a whole new level.
But these companies do not always provide a standalone DSP for you to use. You would either need to hook them up to your own DSP or give them your ads to serve on your behalf.
2: Always look for DSPs with 3rd Party Fraud detection services
A lot of DSPs out there claim to serve your ads to a nearly guaranteed 100% of humans as opposed to bots. But whether they do so or not is always a little not sure. That is why it is always better to hook up to a DSP that has its traffic verified by external sources. Personally, I would always recommend Dataxu as a great DSP if you can afford them. They go beyond simply providing 3 levels of fraud detection into offering you a money back guarantee if fraud levels ever exceed 3% of your spend (which if you’re using their platform never will). Another great option is Bucksense. No guarantee here but there are external sources verifying your data.
3: Be very clear on the cost of the DSP you will be using
Many DSPs love to brag about not having a subscription fee or state that they are much cheaper than the industry average when in fact they would be much more expensive than the premium options you may find. DSPs like Choozle claim to have the lowest cost of programmatic of any DSP out there. So when I talked to them and asked for an example bill here is what I found.
- Subscription: $100 - $499 (depending on what plan you are on)
- Advertising budget markup: 40%
This means that if you are planning a monthly ad buy of $10,000 you’re actual cost would be $14,000 + subscription cost!
Now choozle claims that 40% is a standard fee across the industry but that is not the case I found especially for self serve where the standards are around 15%.
If you look on their site the 40% is no-where to be found. So be careful. Personally, I would prefer going for offerings that charge based on a baked-in CPM/CPC margin. This would make your experience a little more familiar to AdWords.
4: You will need customer support, make that an important part of your decision
While picking a DSP to work with make sure that they have good customer support and good account managers otherwise you may find yourself walking blind. Make sure that they offer training and demos to get you up and running.
5: Reporting
Make sure that the platform you are using offers thorough reporting features. Again, Dataxu is one of the best here where they offer a dashboard and scheduled reports. Within reporting always look for the ability to go as granular as possible in the data in order to be able to understand and optimize better.
6: What Exchanges Are They Hooked Up To
The point of using programmatic is having a bigger and better pool of ad inventory. The way that DSPs do this is via access to exchanges like OpenX, Rubicon, Google Doubleclick, AppNexus … You have to make sure that the platform you are hooking up to has these exchanges.
Final Words
The world of programmatic is filled with many offerings that will push you in a million directions. If you’re really looking into entering this field make sure you do your research. Programmatic can be a major money maker for you but also a major money drain if you do not know what you are doing.
If you have any questions or feel like you might require extra help breaking into the world of programmatic. Hit me with a direct message, I’d be more than happy to help.