Programmatic Advertising Effectively Identifies Your Audience — Here’s How

More than 80 percent of all digital display ads in the U.S. will be purchased this year through automated channels, according to eMarketer. One area that’s exploding with ad spending in this direction is on programmatic advertising.

Programmatic ads are automated using audience data and technology to achieve the right marketing to the right person, at the right time, in a relevant context. Marketers are expected to spend over $46 billion in 2018 on digital display ads and video display ads on the web, mobile phones, and tablets, across hundreds of sites.

When conceived and programmed correctly, programmatic advertising ensures that key target audiences are being properly identified, and are being shown helpful, informative, relevant and timely content. This can have a meaningful impact on a brand that’s doing programmatic right. Done poorly, and it can have the reverse effect.

Benefits of Programmatic

Programmatic ads are powerful in helping SMB advertisers with their branding efforts. Having a focused ad targeting strategy can help small and medium-sized businesses in keeping their budgets in line and can be very effective in engagement and conversions down the line with target audiences.

Another benefit to programmatic ads is the opportunity for marketers to develop real-time audience insights that can be immediately impactful. Having these insights can help bolster future campaigns, increase optimizations and the develop future strategies.

Customize your Message

Programmatic makes it easier for advertisers to find desired target audiences across the internet, wherever those audiences are located. For example, a consumer may have visited a local car dealership online, and location data may show a pattern of other dealership visits. Programmatic will assume the consumer is in the market for a new or used car and may set up ad opportunities for that purpose. This targeting is managed anonymously, without marketers learning any identity information about the potential car buyer.

Identifying Audiences

Programmatic advertising technology works best for identifying niche audiences. For example, a surfing equipment and supplies website found that programmatic advertising showed that its top visitors were young adult males (aged 20-35) who live in the North Pacific region, read the site during worktime lunch, and have been regular visitors. Armed with this data, an advertiser using programmatic technology would have definite ideas on who and where are these persons, what time of day they might be most receptive to relevant ads, and what type of content to show in the ads.

Mix up the approaches

Programmatic is best known for targeting audiences and driving conversions. But advertisers who are developing their branding can get experimental by trying different approaches. 

Advertisers could beta test a top-down approach by developing programmatic ads for the most engaged online users, perhaps those at the very top of online sites. They could also try to target their efforts to the most popular competitor sites that most people click to.

Conversely, advertisers might want to try a bottom-up approach, developing campaigns for small but dedicated audiences at certain sites, and building a sizeable budget to them. With this approach, niche clients might achieve higher CTRs than competitors in a similar industry.

To learn more about how to make programmatic advertising work for your local market or industry, look to the Interactive Advertising Bureau for a deep dive into programmatic advertising, discussing what’s ahead, what challenges marketers face in making this type of ad work for them, and how the industry has to change in order to survive.