Programmatic trading is not a new thing, it has been around for more than a decade BUT the hype surrounding it since 2014 has put it at the forefront of marketers around the world. So what is it and how can you use it to help drive your conversions online?
Programmatic media or programmatic marketing, programmatic advertising etc is essentially a collection of technologies that automate the buying, placement and optimisation of advertising. In essence, it is deploying media or adverts via an automated method in a smart way. Nothing new there right? You do that all the time when you use Google Adwords or boost a post on Facebook don’t you? Well not quite – there is more to it than that…
The kind of automated trading we are talking about here is more akin to the way in which city brokers trade stocks. It is based around automated real-time bidding that comes from complicated algorithms and matches ads with audiences.
Google has just released a 5-step guide on how to navigate the tricky terrain of programmatic marketing, citing case studies from some big brands such as Talk-Talk, Nestle and Nike.
Programmatic buying allows brands to use audience insights and technology to tailor messages to the right person, at the right moment, in the right context. It helps brands respond to real-time signals on an impression-by-impression basis across screens and across channels. For example, if a mother’s online shopping gets interrupted with errands, programmatic buying can help the retailer she was visiting reach her on her smartphone as she shifts to shopping on-the-go. That’s just one of an unlimited number of scenarios brands can use to engage audiences with programmatic buying.
So the benefits of setting up a programmatic trading scheme for your marketing campaign are clearly positive. Tim Irwin, CEO at media purchase agency Maxus says „Essentially the main benefit of programmatic buying is that it allows advertisers to only pay for the audiences they really want, avoiding wastage but retaining scale. As all of this is done in real time, for many advertisers it is the ultimate efficiency driver and contributor to positive return on investment.“
The key to this is knowing your audience and this can only be done if you are collecting data. Not just the basics either, the more in depth knowledge you have about your target audience the so you need to collate first, second and third-party data sources, offline data and campaign data to name just a few.
For a full in-depth look, read the Google 5-Step Guide to programmatic marketing and make notes on what you can incorporate in to your marketing strategy today.
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