Advertising is an integral part of the marketing strategy of companies wishing to place their product or service. Currently, with technological innovations, digital marketing is now essential in the field. Programmatic marketing in particular is the preferred option for companies, although today there are still few of them who do not take advantage of all the advantages it offers…
What is programmatic advertising?
This system is not recent, as it was created in 2000 with the implementation of Google’s Adwords campaigns. This is an automated purchase method for advertising inserts in real time. The auction principle based on Real Time Bidding or RTB is applied, involving several advertisers. The highest offers get their ads published and the process is done in a thousandth of a second and adapts to all types of digital media. Advertisements can be visible on an e-commerce site, on a blog page, in social networks, on PCs or on smartphones.
Programmatic advertising aims to allow advertisers and publishers to improve the performance of their marketing campaigns. They can benefit from significant time savings, because if they are advertisers, they no longer need to contact the publisher site each time to have their ads published and to negotiate prices with each of them. In addition, they can better orient them by taking into account the target audience and the highest audience rate, which will help them achieve the conversion goals they have set themselves much more quickly.
What are the different programmatic buying methods?
The Open Exchange
Open exchange or open action is the one most commonly used in programmatic advertising campaigns. It allows the advertiser to outbid on a maximum of sites. This option remains subject to the vagaries of very tough competition with thousands of other advertisers. On the other hand, it gives the opportunity to be able to constitute a target public by taking into account geographical parameters, as well as their centers of interest, their sex or their age.
Private Market Places or PMPs
The second programmatic buying method is the Private Market Places or PMP. This solution is considered to be the most interesting in terms of the quality of the placement of advertising inserts and visibility. However, the private marketplace is not for all advertisers. Only those who obtain an invitation from the publisher via a Deal ID will be able to purchase the specified advertising space. This is an identification code specific to each buyer and each supplier. Selected buyers will usually be from the vendor’s niche, which will significantly restrict competition. On the other hand, the costs will be higher than for the Open Exchange.
Direct programmatic
Like when the buyer undertakes a manual advertising campaign, programmatic advertising can be direct. He can directly address a publisher in him a campaign via an order form. In English, the direct programmatic is said preferred buying deal. The buyer can choose the supplier to whom to entrust his campaign. The latter will be responsible for bringing it to an end and any changes that may be made will be notified to the publisher so that he can take care of them. This solution is suitable for buyers who do not have the time to take care of the purchase of their advertising space themselves.
Regardless of the method implemented, the publisher will not need to offer its inventory on several platforms. This is accessible on a single platform, the Selling Side Platform. To access it, the buyer will go to a Demand Side Platform to bid on a still corresponding to the criteria he has set for his campaign.
However, the mode of operation of programmatic is not limited to the bids made by the buyer on a given advertising space. Indeed, thanks to the DSP, advertisers are able to better manage their budget. Programmatic algorithms also give them the ability to better target their audiences. This alleviates the problems marketers have in capturing the attention of potential customers who don’t use a single channel to shop or find a service. One day they may search from social networks, another from search engines. Moreover, 85% of them start their research from their PC, before continuing on their smartphone.
Programmatic advertising is a major asset for companies that want to impose their presence on the Internet and take advantage of the advantages offered by digital marketing, at a time when consumer habits are becoming more and more consolidated in online purchases. According to statistics, in 2021, more than 22% of the world’s population go online for their purchases. It is therefore essential for companies to take advantage of this immense reservoir of potential buyers. By refining targeting as much as possible with programmatic, ads can reach the right people at the right time.
The benefits of targeting
There are several types of targeting that marketers use to make their campaigns visible to people who might be interested in them.
Targeting by keywords
Targeting can be done by analyzing the keywords related to the theme of a website. Thus, an advertisement for a personal services company will be assigned a list of related keywords. The sites whose content is in adequacy can then host the corresponding ad.
Behavioral targeting
the targeting can be behavioral. When visiting certain websites, the Internet user often clicks on cookies. Thanks to tracking, the latter make it possible to retarget those who have already consulted a site, whatever it is, and who consult another with an unrelated theme. He may therefore have visited a fashion site, chosen an item there, but abandoned his shopping cart, then a few days later, he went to a site specializing in vintage cars. Although the site has no connection to the one previously visited, he will still receive an advertisement on fashion items there.
Contextual targeting
Contextual targeting is the solution chosen by advertisers who only wish to see their advertising on sites related to their sector of activity. Here, semantics is used to target the audience.
Geographic targeting
Companies that want to direct their offers to the population of a well-defined region will opt for targeting by geolocation. Their advertisements will thus only be broadcast in a well-defined geographical area.
These different techniques are used in programmatic marketing to prevent advertisements from being too scattered, to the point of not reaching their real targets. They also contribute to supporting companies in their efforts to reach potential customers by adapting to their unpredictable change in purchasing behavior and their need to have rapid responses to their expectations.
From a budgetary point of view, it is the ideal solution to reduce costs and save time. It should be noted that traditional negotiation methods are both budget-intensive and time-consuming insofar as the company must contact the publishers one by one and negotiate the publication conditions manually, without this always having positive results.
Programmatic advertising, the future of digital marketing
Programmatic advertising is, for 9 out of 10 companies, the new face of advertising. It will be refined even more over the years to come to be closer to consumers and to be able to offer them an ever more personalized offer. However, in order to preserve the privacy and personal data of Internet users, the regulations in force could be reinforced in the future, both at the level of the European Economic Area and at the national level.