You have a talented marketing team. You work hard at putting together a great message for your target market. But you struggle to reach them with your message. Thousands of ads bombard consumers every day. You’ll want to use Go Florida SEO
How do you cut through the noise and reach your target market without blowing up your budget? The answer is programmatic advertising.
Programmatic advertising focuses your specific message and gets it in front of the right people at the right time. If you’re not using programmatic advertising already, your message may be missing your target.
If you’ve never heard of programmatic advertising then you may not know how powerful it can be as part of your marketing strategy.
What Is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the use of software to place ads in digital media. Programmatic ads are placed automatically through an online system as opposed to the traditional methods where humans (advertisers) have to place physical ad insertion orders with publishers (other humans.)
The programmatic definition means ads that are programmable and don’t need to have human interaction. It began as a way to sell off leftover remnant space but has grown into a completely new way of buying ads.
Programmatic ads are placed by software and machines, eliminating humans from the whole process. Which makes the process more reliable, efficient, and cost-effective.
The traditional methods of advertising involve a lot of parts, leading to lots of opportunities for someone to drop the ball.
Let’s face it, several humans, communicating back and forth, negotiating, creates tons of unnecessary paperwork, and costs even more in time. It’s not the most efficient way to get your ads out.
The worst part, though, is the lack of visible ROI from your advertising dollars. It was once a held belief that advertising could not be tracked.
But with the creation of programmatic advertising and other artificial intelligence, that is no longer the case. In fact, it’s one of the best reasons to take advantage of programmatic advertising – you can track every dollar as well as the return for each dollar spent.
Having programmatic advertising available makes your ad spend work more efficiently and effectively by continuously putting the right message in front of the right person. And it will follow your prospects online so that your message continues to show your product or service to those most likely to buy from you.
It’s all about working smarter – not harder. Having AI in your advertising will give you the most for your advertising dollar, making your ads do more work with less effort from you.
And the best part of using programmatic advertising is that it will be more accurate. When you set up your ad, you can create your perfect target audience. Then you only show your message to that audience, which differs from traditional advertising methods.
Different Types of Programmatic Advertising
There are several different types of programmatic advertising. Which one you will be using will depend on the publisher’s site you’re working with.
Real-Time Bidding
You may be familiar with Facebook’s auction-style ad service. That service is real-time bidding (RTB) which is only one way advertisers can use programmatic advertising.
They work by auctioning off an impression, in real-time, as a user loads a web page. The advertiser bids for the targeted consumer. If that advertiser is the highest bidder for that impression, they will get the impression. And that advertiser’s ad will be the one loaded on the page.
All this occurs through an ad exchange system and takes milliseconds to compute – it’s complete by the time the website loads.
Advertisers use a demand-side platform (DSP) which is software used to buy advertising, to place their orders for how many impressions they want and how much they’re willing to pay for each impression. Then, publishers use their supply-side platform (SSP) to match-up their available ad space with advertisers’ orders. And that match-up happens in real-time.
The advent of the RTB ad exchange has made placing ads much more efficient for advertisers, saving tons of money and time. With the ad exchange, advertisers can target only the audiences they want without the ones they don’t, cutting ad spend.
Guaranteed and Premium Ads
But RTB is only one way to use programmatic advertising. You can also buy guaranteed space and digital display ads which are premium impressions that fall under the programmatic ads heading. These types of ads appear at the top of the page (header) the sidebar and the footer of a page.
Publishers who want to control who ends up on their premium ad space use a private exchange. For example, let’s say you own a website and you have a cozy relationship with an agency or specific advertiser. You prefer to see them in your premium ad space. You might not put that ad space on the open market. Instead, you would offer it directly to the preferred advertiser.
Instead, you would only offer this premium space to the people you chose to offer it to. Or you could offer it to any advertisers willing to pay the premium price for it. Either way, the publisher controls this type of ad space and doesn’t go out to the auction exchange.
Native Advertising
Native advertising is an effective way to get your message in front of your target without taking away from the user experience. Native ads hide within the context of the site, so they’re more likely to be seen and read by the reader. They’re less flashy so they’re less likely to be ignored, which makes them a great choice for getting your message to your audience.
Video Ads
Video ads have become more popular in the programmatic ad space. Today you can buy programmatic ads that appear before, during, or after a video on any of the video platforms, called in-stream ads.
These ads and have made a lot of YouTubers a good chunk of money. They also provide a powerful return on investment for the advertisers.
But video isn’t just for YouTube. You’ll find video ads that play on many websites, as well. Video ads can be placed on the site like traditional display ads – in the header, footer, and sidebar.
Social Media
Social media ads are effective because social platforms collect so much data, advertisers can focus their messages. Platforms like Facebook collect behavioral data from users which allows advertisers to create “look-alike” audiences, which makes your ad spend super-specific.
Audio Ads
With the rise of podcasts, programmatic audio ads have also become popular. Podcasters are influencers, much like YouTubers, and can tap into your specific audience.
Like video ads, you’ll find these before, during, and after the broadcast. You can have the influencer read your advertising message for a premium price.
Ever-Evolving Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic marketing can be any type of advertising in today’s sophisticated marketplace. Traditional outdoor ad space has even become programmable. Have you noticed digital billboards? Now advertisers can pay for their billboard to display at certain times of day, like rush hour, to get the highest exposure.
Believe it or not, TV advertising is even moving to this model, known as OTT. Advertisers discovered they can get ultra-specific with viewers instead of relying on a show or network’s ratings. They can reach subsets of viewers instead of all the viewers, who may not be the target for their messaging. Cool, huh?
The bottom line is programmatic advertising is everywhere and it’s helping companies trim some fat on their ad spending. With programmatic marketing, marketing teams can target their messages and deliver them to their specific audiences.
Why Should I Use Programmatic Ads?
Programmatic marketing makes it possible for any advertiser, not just big agencies with monster budgets, to get their message out there. Before AI marketing came into the picture, smaller businesses had to compete head-to-head with corporations and huge agencies for their small piece of the advertising pie.
Today, if you’re smart about how you program your marketing, you can get your marketing message out to only the prospects you need. Your marketing dollars will be as effective as major brands, without the enormous price tag.
Smart marketers can create many messages for subsets of their own audiences. For example, imagine you have a product that women ages 18-25 and also ages 30-45 enjoy. Do you think you would craft the same message for both groups?
In the old days of advertising, you couldn’t afford to create two separate messages. But in this programmatic marketing world, you can and you should.
The best part is it will cost you less to create two messages and send them to those specific audiences than it would have cost you in the past without programmatic capabilities.
AI marketing has become so prevalent in our marketplace, people are used to seeing ads targeted to them. And they prefer it to un-targeted ads. Consumers are bombarded with ads all day but only see about half of them.
What Are the Downsides?
Learning to use algorithms and mastering the platforms has a learning curve. The reason programmatic advertising hasn’t caught on as fast as many predicted is that most people are still learning how to use it.
In today’s high-tech marketing field, many teams are bringing in tech-savvy people to help their team manage all the technology. Companies find hiring a tech person is easier than expecting their creatives to learn to be techy.
An alternative to that is hiring a company, like Go Florida SEO, to handle all the tech stuff for your marketing. SEO, programmatic advertising, AI marketing are all tech-focused. Hiring a company that specializes in those areas can cut down on your learning curve.
Yes, it’s a little complicated for marketing teams who have only had to focus on being creative for so long to become tech smart. So, expect to run into some roadblocks while getting your programmatic marketing strategies off the ground.
And it’s not only programmatic advertising. The marketing world is becoming much more tech-heavy with AI marketing in play. Algorithms, designed to help make your marketing efficient and effective, are difficult for most laypeople to understand.
Another issue you may contend with is the over-use of programmatic ads. Consumers can become exhausted from constant targeting and retargeting.
That’s the kind of thing that can make your audience angry and turned off. They will tune out your messages. And that’s the exact opposite of what you’re going for.
It’s important to keep the human element in your advertising, no matter what tech you’re using.
People still want to know that there’s an actual human behind all the messaging. So, make sure you don’t overdo the programmatic ads.
What’s the Bottom Line?
In the end, if you’re marketing team isn’t using programmatic ads, it could spell disaster for your ROI. Programmatic advertising is here to stay. Most advertising and marketing is moving towards AI-driven design. Now is the time to get your marketing team comfortable with all the tech.
And that’s great news for you. Once you get your team on-board with the tech and learn to use these powerful tools, you will look like the marketing superhero. You’ll be responsible for creating more effective messaging and saving the company’s bottom line at the same time.
If you’re looking for help getting your marketing team up and running with programmatic marketing and advertising strategies, Go Florida SEO can help. Fill out the contact form to get in touch and we’ll cover your first month of strategy or SEO consulting.
