What is That Programmatic Thing-a-ma-jiggy?

Many recruiting leaders view programmatic advertising as the cornerstone of their advertising strategy, while others view it as a mystery item on the advertising budget. It is for this latter group, that we will dive into what programmatic advertising is, where it came from, and more. We’ll start back where it all began...

The History of Programmatic Advertising

The concept of programmatic advertising has been around since 1995 when a company named DoubleClick sold banner advertising space across a network of websites. This was a huge time saver for advertising agencies and large consumer brands who no longer had to negotiate and post individual ads one at a time.?This early form of programmatic focused mostly on consumer brand advertising, and as the internet grew, so did DoubleClick, ultimately catching the attention of Google who purchased DoubleClick for $3.1bil in 2006.??

Programmatic took another big leap in the early 2000s when companies introduced the first real-time bidding platforms (RTBs). This was a new technology giving advertisers the ability to bid on ad space in real-time based on specific factors like audience, content, and budget. A new term CPM (Cost-Per-Mil) emerged, as a measurement of the cost per 1000 displays of an advertisement. This helped advertisers control costs while boosting overall performance. Throughout 2006 and 2007, several new competitors entered the programmatic fray, bringing technology to place multiple ads in a variety of sizes, shapes, and locations.

Finally Recruiting Gets its Own Programmatic

It was between 2008 and 2012 that the first programmatic platforms devoted exclusively to recruitment advertising emerged. Recruiters everywhere rejoiced, as they could now post jobs to multiple job boards simultaneously, saving themselves from hours of tedious, repetitive work.? This ushered in the golden era of programmatic recruitment advertising giving us Appcast and Greenhouse in 2014, and a slew of others in subsequent years.

So What is Programmatic Exactly?

Programmatic is a technology that brings automation, cost control, and performance optimization to the placement of advertisements throughout the internet. For recruiters, this means getting your job postings displayed on multiple job boards and career sites quickly and easily. It also means having real-time visibility into performance with integrations that allow you to track leads all the way to hire, and have real data to make campaign decisions for better performance.

Personally, I was an early adopter of programmatic advertising, using it as the heavy lifter in my advertising campaigns. It is a quick and easy way to drive applicant flow to all of the open positions, and when open roles are fed through an XML feed from your ATS, your ads can update automatically. This allows for more time to build unique custom strategies for those harder to fill positions.

It was a real challenge to keep this topic short and sweet. For those interested in a deeper dive into programmatic recruitment advertising, you can check out Programmatic Recruitment Technology 101 from my team at Appcast. As always, don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe to The Monday Minute.

Have a great week in recruiting!

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