In today’s chaotic digital world, traditional media buying methods just aren’t cutting it. That’s where the new wave of automated media buying comes in: programmatic advertising.
In a nutshell, programmatic advertising is the buying and selling of digital ad space using algorithms, technology, and automation, all bought, sold and traded in a matter of milliseconds.
How does programmatic advertising work?
Programmatic advertising gives you a more efficient and effective way to reach your target audience. Instead of buying ads one by one across several different publications, you can plug in specific details about your target audience that go further than their general demographics (you know, age, sex, location, household income, etc). Then, it finds those people and shows them your ad, giving you hyper-targeted campaigns. Sounds like a dream, right?
Here’s some benefits to programmatic advertising:
- Increased Efficiency: Programmatic advertising automates the media buying process, saving you time and resources.
- Improved Targeting: By using data-driven targeting, you can reach your ideal customers with more accuracy.
- Enhanced Measurement: Programmatic advertising gives you even more details when it comes to analytics and reporting, so you can track the performance of your campaigns with more insights.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Programmatic advertising can be more cost-effective than traditional media buying methods, so your ad dollars go further than ever before.
A real-world example
Pretend you’re a clothing brand looking to target young women from the ages of 18-25. Using programmatic advertising, you create a campaign that targets women who have visited fashion websites in the last 3 months or followed fashion influencers on social media recently. This makes sure your ads are being seen by people who are most likely going to be interested in your products. Pretty handy, right?
Real Time Bidding (RTB): A game-changer
Programmatic advertising wouldn’t be what it is without Real Time Bidding (RTB), which means ad space is auctioned off instantly instead of having to go through the whole RFP process with a publication’s Sales Team before getting your ads in the wild. This means you get highly targeted ads that help you reach the right people.
Unlike the “old” ways of traditional media buying (buh-bye media kits and schmoozy sales calls!), RTB streamlines the ad-buying process, letting you activate thousands of ads in seconds.
Since it’s so efficient and cost-effective, RTB is now one of the most popular ways to buy ad inventory online – and we are not surprised in the least.
Data-driven targeting with Data Management Platforms
To make the most of programmatic advertising, understanding your audience at its core is crucial. Data management platforms, or DMPs, help you gather and sort through customer data, so you can create hyper-targeted audience segments.
This is really valuable for fast growing businesses overwhelmed by the amount of data from their ad campaigns. Bigger campaigns and higher ad spends mean mountains of data to go through once everything has wrapped, which isn’t just a pain in the neck, but also takes up a big chunk of time that could be spent on other projects.
But fortunately DMPs streamline data management, so you can focus on developing more informed marketing strategies to reach the right people instead of wasting time figuring out the story hidden in huge amounts of data.
The power of AI and machine learning in media buying
AI and machine learning (ML) are completely changing the game when it comes to media buying. These technologies analyse data on a grand scale to identify patterns and trends, helping you optimise your campaigns in real time.
They also help you understand your audience better so you can make smarter choices about where to spend your ad dollars and measure how well everything is working. Plus, AI helps you figure out the best time to launch campaigns so you can be smart with your ad spend and easily track how successful your ads are.
With AI, you can understand your target audience better and make more informed decisions about advertising strategies down the line.
Programmatic Advertising: The future of media buying
Programmatic advertising is the future of media buying, and the future is here, now. By using new technology and data, you can get more targeted and effective campaigns that cut costs, reach goals faster and deliver seriously better results. If you’re not already using programmatic advertising, we reckon it’s time to start!
