Ever since the pandemic outburst last year, there has been a shift in consumer preference and they are now inclined towards the online space for all kinds of purchasing, be it essentials, groceries, medical supplies, or even apparel and lingerie. This is the reason why brands had to adopt the ‘digital-only’ approach in their operations and are also focusing on bringing about innovations in their marketing strategies so as to have a competitive edge in the market. In order to adapt to the digital medium and garner maximum benefits, brands are also increasingly preferring towards incorporating programmatic advertising in their marketing plans so as to cater to the large consumer base that is active in the digital space.
Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising refers to buying ad impressions in real-time. It was devised to help publishers find an easy route to sell their unsold inventory. It helps advertisers to cut the middlemen and streamline the ad buying process by omitting the need for securing inventory. It also aids in reserving impressions even in 100ths of a second and enables advertisers to have greater control over the target audience and they don’t rely on unknown data which publishers own or control. It also gives access to the collected data that the advertiser can utilize it to personalize the brand’s storytelling and ad creatives.
Programmatic advertising helps bring about cheap impressions. It helps the brands to strategically reach their audience base and walk them off on their entire buying journey until they make the purchase. It is just not limited to driving clicks and goes one step ahead by measuring cross-device attribution to understand how mobile exposure is affecting the brand’s sales. It is also used for targeting consumers without shrinking the scale.
Programmatic advertising helping in ensuring brand awareness
Brands in the present times should consider tapping customers via all touchpoints and channels. Programmatic helps in achieving this objective and allows the user to simultaneously reach the brand across multiple devices be it desktop, laptop, tablet, smart TV, etc. It also boosts brand awareness amongst the users covering all the relevant channels with appropriate ad format and innovative creatives.
Programmatic helping to tap the right set of audience
It enables audience targeting at a granular level and creates segments on the basis of various characteristics- geographic, demographic, behavioral, location, etc. Choosing the right target options helps save the advertising budget and reduces the expenditure on advertising amongst irrelevant users. With programmatic advertising, one can implement audience expansion strategies and brands can tap the right audiences and spread awareness amongst the potential customers for future engagement and communication.
Programmatic advertising ensuring brand safety and visibility
Every brand in the market is concerned about their first impression with the consumers as they know that this first interaction can eventually impact their communication with fellow potential customers and their brand image. This is the reason why brands don’t want their ads to be placed alongside controversial, derogatory, or offensive content as they don’t want to foster negative associations.
Programmatic helps minimalize this possibility and ensure brand safety. With the help of list builders, they can create a white, black, or negative keywords list and ensure that their ads don’t appear on malicious websites.
Programmatic advertising comes with an added and major advantage of ensuring brand visibility. This is the primary reason why it is being increasingly preferred by brands. A brand wants to seen and make its presence felt wherever and whenever possible, just at the right spots and programmatic advertising helps in achieving the same.
Programmatic advertising and buying helping in the personalization of customer experience
Programmatic advertising particularly buying is an ideal solution considering that brands deploy their messaging amongst the consumers via various channels. Programmatic technologies such as DMPs (Data Management Platforms) and DSPs (Modern Demand-Side Platforms) are also used to gain insights on consumer usage so that brands can deliver personalized and customized messages via the right route, at the right moment, and in the right context.
In the present times, when consumers are loaded with data and ads, such personalized services give an edge to the brands and pave the way for increased customer interaction and engagement. The data can also be used to analyze the customer preferences and build the creatives accordingly which can trigger an emotional response and give the advertising campaign an artsy and customized touch. This will ensure increased customer attraction and engagement and will transform them from consumers to loyal customers.
Future of programmatic advertising
In recent years, programmatic advertising has emerged as a viable solution that helps businesses reach their target audience effectively with the appropriate messaging. Storytelling by brands is a new concept but has been picking up pace effectively. It is now being implemented at a cross-channel and omnichannel level. Various industry experts also predict that programmatic will dominate advertising and marketing by the year 2030.
However, to gauge the brand’s health, the traditional methods won’t work with programmatic advertising. The measurement has to be holistic keeping into consideration both short-term and long-term marketing objectives of the campaign along with real-time indicators. Marketers need to look beyond sales and conversion metrics and need to include techniques like marketing impact analytics to link online and offline sales to marketing activities.
Associated risks with programmatic
One major challenge associated with programmatic advertising is that the risk of fraudulent traffic to unwise use of advertising budget along with the possibility of advertiser’s ads being run in undesirable or unserved locations. However, these are the early days’ issues right from the moment the ad campaign is run and can be resolved right there and then.
Furthermore, the introduction of third-party verification partners ensures that ad exchanges are on top of the inventory quality. Hence, collaborating with them will help advertisers to overcome the challenges of programmatic advertising and will make it the go-to strategy for brands to step up their game in the digital space.
Summing Up!
Programmatic advertising helps the brands match their consumer behavior as they move through various channels on their buying journey and helps devise solutions accordingly. This targeted and personalization of ads gives programmatic advertising an edge over traditional display advertising.
It is indeed a way more efficient and effective concept to buy and sell ads in the digital space. As technologies will evolve, programmatic advertising will also flourish in the times ahead and will help brands in tapping the right audience base at the right moment in the right context and will also help them in enhancing their storytelling techniques. Programmatic advertising is emerging as the future of digital brand advertising and will soon be an integral part of the brand’s digital storytelling and marketing campaigns in the times ahead.
