What you need to know about Programmatic buying
If your business uses online marketing, it is likely that you have heard about the term “programmatic marketing” and how it has changed the advertising landscape.
It is widely claimed to be the future of digital marketing, but how does programmatic marketing platform work? How is it defined? What are the advantages and opportunities? Here we break it down for you –
What’s Programmatic Marketing?
In simple terms, programmatic marketing is a way to target what type of audience you wish to show your ads to. This can comprise segments across demographics like age, gender, social standing and geographical areas.
As is the case with Paid Search, you can put limitations to the ads regarding the time of the day and frequency of the ad visibility. You can, therefore, decide which publishers you want to show your ads on.
This way you only pay for the most effective adverts- delivered to the right people, at the right time. This differs from traditional ad buying in a way that- no longer do the buyers need to agree to a run a particular number of ads with a publisher and get locked-in to a contract.
Specifically, programmatic advertising definition is
This process involves using software for automated purchase, placements and optimization of media inventory through a bidding system. Automating it means that it can be done on a real-time basis. Thus, it doesn’t have to be dependent on human intervention like manual insertions or trading.
It allows the brand to customize their message/creation to the right person, at the right time and in right the context, using the visitor information gathered from the brand (i.e. the customers you want to target) around the type of audience that they want to target.
This method delivers better precision and personalization of messaging and media- resulting in increasingly efficient targeted campaigns and less of what we call “spray and pray” method- which is less targeted and depends completely on sheer volume, primarily on impressions.
How does Programmatic marketing work in real-life?
There are two main types of programmatic marketing or advertising, they are- Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and Programmatic Direct.
In Real-Time Bidding (RTB)- brands use a demand-side platform (DSP) to decide which impressions to buy and how much to pay for them- while publishers use a supply-side platform (SSP) to see advertising space to the brands.
Consequently, these two platforms are then matched-up in real time.
Programmatic Direct – also called Programmatic Guaranteed on the other hand means- guaranteed impressions.
A specific price is pre-set by the buyer and the seller before the impressions go live on the website.
When the agency (brand) wants to reach to a wider audience, magnify the message- beyond the pre-agreed campaign, the marketers can bid for the real-time impressions.
How does Programmatic marketing differ from traditional methods of digital marketing?
Programmatic marketing, buying and advertising is about driving efficiencies in marketing expenditure and resource.
While, ad buyers manually purchase the digital ad space for their clients (in short, there is human intervention).
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