Programmatic advertising is not new in the Netherlands, but why do so few marketers know exactly what it entails? We can quickly get lost in the many words surrounding programmatic advertising, but if you get it, then you also have many advantages.
This way, you have more influence on the advertising process, and you can display personalized content. And there is a lot more. So prepare yourself for the ‘programmatic way’ within marketing.
Programmatic advertising in the base
For marketers, the place, time, and context of advertising is very important. For this, we use our customer data and other data sources. Instead of manually managing campaigns, this is increasingly moving to automation. Systems decide which bids are placed for which advertising space. We call this programmatic advertising: the use of automation in the purchase and sale of (paid) media.
Demand and supply-side
The system of programmatic advertising consists of a supply and demand side. On the supply side are organizations that own advertising space. To optimize the offer of advertising spaces, some organizations have specialized in bringing together the offer. These are the ad networks or sales houses.
The entire supply-side offers the available spaces in a supply-side platform. Wanting to buy advertising space is the demand side. Advertisers and organizations that want to purchase advertising space often outsource the purchase and optimization to ad agencies and media buying agencies. Marketing campaigns are managed via a demand-side platform.
Communication
The supply and demand sides communicate with each other through ad exchanges. This way, the match can be made between an available advertising space and demand. Within milliseconds, a winner is chosen, and the ad loaded. This all happens even before the user has landed on the web page.
Developments
Marketing has been developing online marketing and marketing automation for years. Although the future of marketers lies in understanding, optimizing, and automating marketing processes. For many marketers, programmatic is often unknown territory.
The developments of programmatic advertising are not standing still because the next list of developments is already ready. Programmatic out-of-home (e.g., digital boards on a station) is becoming increasingly popular, and the future lies with programmatic linear TV, which is now in full development.
Cookie with it?
The use of cookies plays a major role in recognizing users and their behavior. Using these cookies, the advertiser can show the right advertisement at the right time and in the right place. Every marketer needs to provide the right call-to-action per phase in the customer journey.
Recognizing user behavior is made easier by programmatic advertising. Besides, you can immediately include users with similar behavior in programmatic advertising because algorithms recognize this behavior.
Challenges
The total amount of media purchased programmatically has been growing for years. But in the meantime, we do expect slower growth in programmatic advertising. This is mainly due to the challenges that privacy legislation and the supply chain pose.
- Blocking 3rd party cookies by browsers.
- Consumers need to remain anonymous.
- New developments in European privacy legislation.
As a marketer, you need to know where you will get your customer data from in the future. Besides, maintaining your own customer database is even more important.
Benefits
The big advantage of programmatic purchasing is that the process shifts from supply-driven to demand-driven. With programmatic purchasing, you, as a buyer, determine what you want to pay and where you want to sell it, then the publisher agrees. As a result, of every euro spent, less remains in the hands of the operator, and more in the hands of the asker!
Other benefits include:
- Content-oriented targeting of your target group.
- Advertise on spaces where your target group is located.
- Lower cost-per-click.
- Content-specific per phase of the customer journey.
- Real-time adjustment on results.
The marketers
We can assume that programmatic advertising is and will remain the future in marketing. The benefits of programmatic advertising, such as tailoring your ads to the customer journey, are goals that many marketers are working towards.
Using cookies and other data to recognize users, programmatic advertising is one of the most personalized automatic forms of advertising to date. But do know that programmatic advertising cannot grow optimally now.
This is because the knowledge and experience of this new way of advertising are not yet available among marketers. Is today’s marketer prepared for this? That is a question that every marketer must answer for himself. What is certain is that the media landscape cannot postpone programmatic anymore. So take the right steps as soon as possible to make the most of this way of advertising.