Jul 26, 2020
Programmatic advertising allows your clients to serve their branded display and native ads across 99% of the internet’s ad servable inventory.
With highly customizable targeting capabilities, programmatic has the ability to reach your clients target audience at the right place and the right time as they browse the web on their desktop, tablet, or mobile device.
This article will highlight the basics of Programmatic, its capabilities, as well as why programmatic display and native should be a staple in your agency’s digital marketing product suite.
What is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic Advertising is a phrase that is commonly heard throughout the marketing world, but what is it exactly?
According to the Digiday Programmatic Bible
Programmatic advertising is the use of software to purchase digital advertising space across the internet.
Programmatic ad buying has evolved drastically from the previous purchasing methods which involved a much more labor intensive and less efficient process, relying on the manual sale of ad space by salespeople to specific advertisers.
The advancements in technology are what have made programmatic advertising so popular today. The reliance on machines allows advertisers to obtain digital ad space in a much more efficient and cost effective way.
How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?
Programmatic Advertising relies on the use of software to help advertisers get their ads in front of the right people at the right time. But how?
The most common way that advertisers purchase ad space programmatically is through a process called “Real Time Bidding” – RTB for short. This process starts when a user loads onto a specific webpage on the internet.
While this page is loading, specific information about the user and the page are sent to an Ad Exchange. We can think of these Ad Exchanges as the marketplace where advertisers can purchase ad space from publishers.
In real time, the Ad Exchange auctions off the ad space to the advertiser who has the highest bid. This whole process happens in milliseconds, right before the page loads on the users screen. Finally the winning bidders ad is shown on one of the multiple available ad slots on that specific domain.
How Do Advertisers Choose What To Bid On?
When an agency partner comes to Conduit to begin running a Programmatic campaign with us, we ask for very basic information to help shape the strategy of the campaign.
This strategy includes:
Targeting
Geography
Marketing tactics
We implement this strategy into what is called a Demand Side Platform, which allows us to access dozens of different Ad Exchanges and bid on ad placements across thousands of different publishers domains.
Depending on the strategy, we can implement various tactics and targeting parameters to ensure your ads are reaching the right audience at the right time!
Programmatic Display vs. Native
While the targeting options for both Display and Native are the same, the difference between these two types of display ads are in the way that they are presented to the user on a specific domain.
Generic display ads are the most common across the web, and have the highest volume of available inventory. We see these ads everyday, most commonly across the header of a domain homepage, along the side of a page, or within a break of the text in an online article.
These ads are generally static images, or HTML5 files that contain visuals, a strong call to action, as well as significant branding to generate awareness to users as they browse the web.
Display ads like Conduit’s “White Label With Color” below are easy to spot as they do not blend in naturally with the surrounding text.
Native, however, is much different. A native display ad will take the look and shape of the webpage that it is being served on. This type of ad is less intrusive, and makes the user experience feel more natural in comparison to a display ad.
For example, Conduit’s display ad appears alongside one of the multiple ad slots on the page, and it is fairly obvious that it is an advertisement.
The native ad would take the shape and theme of other article links on the site, and would be less conspicuous in terms of users actually feeling like they clicked on an ad.
For instance, below is an image of a native ad organically mixed in to match the formatting of the articles. A user online would not know its an ad based off of how well it blends in with the rest of the content around it. This is one of the benefits to using native ads in your marketing plan.
Generally native ads will promote specific content that is relevant to the client, so for example a car dealership might utilize native to promote their blog post about the Top 10 Vehicle Models of 2020, in which their vehicle is ranked very highly.
Native helps generate brand awareness and brand credibility through various forms of relevant long tail content.
Programmatic Targeting Capabilities
We talked briefly about how programmatic advertising helps you reach your ideal audience, at the right place at the right time. But how? At Conduit we utilize a blend of tactics based on the overall strategy of the campaign to help get your brand message out to users who have shown interest through various targeting channels. These tactics include:
Site Retargeting:
Site Retargeting allows us to serve ads to your clients most relevant audience, users who have previously visited their website! It’s said that 96% of users who visit a webpage will leave without ever converting to a lead or sale.
Site Retargeting allows us to recapture this audience and serve them your ads as they browse other sites online, and help drive them back to take a specific conversion action on your website!
Purchase Receipt:
Have an idea of what your ideal audience may be interested in purchasing? Through Purchase Receipt targeting we are able to hone in your targeting efforts to users who have received purchase receipts sent to their email inbox from specific types of businesses that may show they are in market for your good or service.
For example, a user who receives a purchase receipt from GNC for workout supplements could be categorized in a broader “fitness” audience.
Email Retargeting:
Similarly to Purchase Receipt targeting. Email Retargeting groups users based on the various subscription emails they receive.
For clients who may be looking to reach users who are new home-owners, we can retarget any user who subscribes to Zillow emails for notifications about new homes on the market, and target them with your clients’ ads!
Email Retargeting is another great way to hone in on users who are interested in your clients specific industry.
Behavioral Keyword:
With Keyword targeting, we can create a custom list of specific terms that your clients ideal audience may be searching when conducting their research online. When a user searches for a keyword that we have on our list, or reads content that contains these keywords they are then eligible to be retargeted with your clients ads.
Point of Interest:
Does your client want to drive relevant users away from their local competition, and into their store? With Point of Interest targeting, we can utilize geo-fencing targeting technology to create virtual fences around your clients competitors.
When a user is tracked via GPS on their mobile device within the fence, they are then eligible to be served your clients ads. Furthermore, we can track when this user then converts to your clients physical location with what we call geo-conversions.
Demographic & Interest Targeting:
Through both first and third party data segments, we’re able to reach your ideal user via demographic and psychographic audiences. Demographic targeting allows us to reach users based on their age, gender, or income while psychographic targeting can get more granular with targeting users who have shown a specific interest in things like, sports, cooking, fitness, etc.!
Why Should You Use Programmatic Display and Native?
According to eMarketer last year alone in the U.S., advertisers spent upwards of $60B on programmatic display. They predict that by 2021, 88% or $81B of all display dollars will be spent programmatically.
This data alludes to the popularity of Programmatic Advertising across the U.S. as it is one of the only marketing channels that give you complete targeting control, and allows you to hone in on your specific target audience.
Programmatic Display and Native are branding tools that help generate top of the funnel brand awareness and visibility from a specific desired group of users.
Display ads offer advertisers the ability to use relevant and eye-catching visuals to help increase brand recall, while also capitalizing on ad remarketing efforts to drive home more bottom of the funnel actions from users.
Native on the other hand is a newer and more innovative way to promote your clients brand, in a non-invasive yet highly targeted way.
With this form of programmatic advertising, you can link users to your clients content that is relevant to content your ideal audience is already seeing!
If your client has an extensive library of blogs, or other informative articles that can help promote themselves as a competitive option for a good or service, we would highly recommend utilizing native to drive further engagement to their website, without the worry of “ad fatigue”.
The Conduit Programmatic Difference
At Conduit, our team of expert analysts are truly dedicated to developing campaign strategies to help produce the results you are looking for.
We are hands on with your campaigns to ensure that they are performing above and beyond your expectations, and that your client ultimately sees a positive return on their marketing investment.
Display and Native are such integral pieces of the marketing funnel, and should be a staple for any agency who is looking to provide a full service digital offering and growing their agency!
