With every year the digital marketing industry gets more technologies and more methods. Thus, it means that there is an increase in the tactics and tools available for advertisers and marketers. This is a good thing. However, it also means that there are lots of complex-sounding definitions and terminologies being thrown around. Such a term is Programmatic Marketing. So what is programmatic marketing?
Programmatic marketing is the process of automatic bidding on an advertising inventory in real-time. It helps you to show a certain advertisement to a specific audience for a particular product or service. It is efficient, fast, and also affordable. Advertisers have to pay for each impression. Thus, being an advertiser you would want to make the most of your ad campaign
SL. | Elements | Stats/Facts |
1. | Paid Advertising | In 2020, 68% of the marketers stated that programmatic paid advertisement is ‘extremely important for the overall marketing strategy. |
2. | Display Ad spends | Programmatic advertising spend will increase by $97 billion by the end of 2022 |
3. | Video Ad spends | In 2021, 75% of the programmatic video advertisement spending will be on mobile ads. |
4. | Worldwide programmatic market share | By 2021, the worldwide programmatic market share is expected to increase by 72%. |
5. | Visibility of Programmatic ads | Programmatic ads have 44%-55% more visibility than other display ads. |
What happens with the advertising process in general?
Advertisement networks buy digital impressions from different websites, portals or apps, ahead of time. These networks then repackage the impressions and then sell them to the businesses without any control or transparency. Thus, this process needs a sales force and also a request for a proposal.
However, the problem is, in this approach, there is a lot of room for error. Therefore, it is not a clear or efficient way and it doesn’t get you promised results. Since you are paying for the impressions, you would want something with control and transparency. Here is where programmatic marketing comes in.
What makes Programmatic Marketing/Advertising beneficial for startups than traditional digital display network ads?
If you are a business owner, it is time to invest in programmatic marketing. We are going to explain here how, as a startup, you can benefit more from programmatic marketing.
1. Higher Control and Transparency
This is what we were talking about. This technology offers an added layer of privacy. Traditional advertising doesn’t have this. In this way, you will have the control to monitor the advertisement reach for your audience. Also, you will get to know whether you are targeting the right audience or not. Also, the costs associated with programmatic marketing and advertisements are counted in real-time. Therefore, you can tweak your campaign to be more result-oriented.
2. Real-Time Management
It is true that real-time data management and reporting is a dream for advertisers. Programmatic marketing offers the ability to measure how effective a campaign is. It doesn’t take much time to show how things are turning out. Since programmatic marketing offers deep analysis, the predictions are accurate. Thus, you can trust the process.
3. Much Better Targeting Capability
Programmatic marketing is the future. It not only offers flexibility but also helps in reaching your target audience in a set time frame. It offers different targeting approaches. For instance, you will have IP targeting which targets specific IP addresses. It is great for businesses and events.
There is also the geolocation targeting facility. This is perfect to target consumers by state, city, and zip code. And we are not done here. It will also offer you context keyword targeting. With so many targeting features, it helps you to reach a customized audience and make more sales.
Also, it helps you to convince a bigger audience to buy from you. This happens because you are targeting the right audience in your niche.
4. Expands Your Reach and Offers Relevant Impressions
There is no doubt that converting leads into customers is the most important challenge for any business, especially for a startup. Programmatic advertising can help in reaching the maximum potential of your business. It will offer you relevant impressions. You can explore the options and see which are not possible when it comes to ad placements that were bought manually.
Also, it helps you buy effective advertising space on the internet. You will have to pay only for the relevant impressions. Thus, it adds flexibility in the ads and you get more advertisements without an overwhelming budget. This something you cannot expect from a traditional advertisement.
This is an efficient way to promote your business. You can check the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies at any given time. Also, the real-time measurements will help you make adjustments when needed.
How Can Startups Get Started with Programmatic Marketing?
Now that we have established the different benefits of programmatic marketing, let us share how startups can use programmatic marketing for their benefit.
1. Know your marketplace
This is the first element of programmatic marketing. It is simple. You have to get to terms with what you are doing. Since a lot of startups will venture into a new area of advertising, you will face a lot of new terms and elements. Take your time to get to know them.
2. Set your goals
Just like digital marketing, it is imperative to set up your goals right from the start. To do that, you have to use the already existing data for determining the type of advertising awareness that you need and establish a fitting strategy. This will also help in determining the long and short-term goals. Don’t jump into programmatic advertising right away unless you are not clear on why you want to do it.
3. The Human Touch
Just because programmatic marketing and advertisements rely on machine learning and algorithms, this doesn’t mean that there is no need for human investment. There are multiple platforms, some of them offer half-managed services. There are others that simply offer the technical platforms where you have to run the programmatic buying activities on your own.
From there, you have to allocate skilled and knowledgeable people to plan, optimize and control the buying and bidding process. The point is, if you want to enjoy optimal success, you have to create a perfect coupling between technical automation and intelligent human intervention. Thus, don’t rely on the algorithm and yield the highest results for your campaign.
4. Protecting the brand
This is an important aspect of programmatic marketing. One challenge of this is since it depends on algorithms and machine learning, the ads can appear in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have to avoid this. Thus, you have to make sure that the demand-side blacklist is monitored and updated for inappropriate websites.
There are some platforms that allow the exclusion of the complete categories from ad spends and that can be helpful. Another option is to use a Whitelist. This is good if your product is sensitive. This will offer you a list of approved websites. This will also narrow your ability to reach your audience.
However, this process might be more expensive but it will also make sure that no unsavory material is associated with your ad. If you are choosing the help of an agency, then you have to make sure that they are not placing ads on low-quality and sensitive websites.
5. Plan Your Ad
If you have got a creative in-house team or if you’re working with a vendor, you have to structure the ads properly. If you are creating your ads on an online builder, then you can input the audience data and then determine the possibilities of results. You can also prepare the ads throughout different formats to place them in different areas.
Think about your next steps. Are you spending the money in the best way? Or you can benefit more by purchasing a second ad or campaign to do A/B testing on the efficacy of both? The benefit of automating some portions of your planning and insertion is, you will have more time to analyze and determine the different steps. With some vendors, you will have an added bonus that they become your partners in helping with programmatic marketing.
Is Programmatic Advertising for You?
A lot of businesses benefit from programmatic marketing and advertising. There is the obvious benefit of time-saving. Therefore, it helps you to use your time to determine the most effective avenues. Also, it enables a startup to move forward with advertising money instead of haggling with multiple agencies.
With more and more businesses discovering the benefits of programmatic advertising, industry experts predict that 86% of ad spending will be programmatic advertising by the end of 2021. Is your business among them? It can be if you want to! Let Skyram Technologies help you with programmatic marketing so that you can make the best out of your marketing and advertising.