3 Methods to Use for Effective Programmatic Advertising

Advertising certainly has changed in recent years. 

In the past, brands would rely on customer feedback and focus group discussions to determine who products were best suited to, often referred to as their target market. Then, with the target market having been defined, they would then have to determine which of the three major media channels their target market was likely to patronize, when they would be most likely to be using that media, and what kind of messaging they’d be most likely to respond to favourably. In many instances, the insights that brands had to rely on were derived from best guesses and estimates, resulting in returns on advertising investment that were less than ideal.

The rise of the internet has changed all of that. While in the past, brands had to rely on little more than guesswork to determine their entire advertising strategy, today, the arrival of programmatic advertising has allowed brands to reach consumers in new ways across a plethora of websites, all while maintaining a consistent message. For the campaigns that have been well-implemented and properly designed, this has resulted in a return on investment that is orders of magnitude greater than that produced by traditional advertising. More and more brands are reorganizing their advertising budget as a result, with an estimated six out of every US$10 spent on advertising being directed toward the internet.

If you represent a brand but are new to programmatic advertising, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s how you can maximize your internet advertising spending and get the most for your marketing budget.

Use Granular Ad Targeting

While the techniques for advertising over the net are relatively new, the principles that support them are as old as commerce itself. One of the most basic principles of advertising is to know your market, and luckily, acquiring information about your target market has never been easier with programmatic ads

Most platforms for programmatic ads allow you to adjust your settings for your ads, including parameters on ad targeting for your potential audience based on age, gender, locality, and other important qualifiers. Directing your ads in this highly targeted and granular way will restrict your ad’s audience somewhat, but it will also increase the likelihood that your ad winds up in front of people who would most likely be interested in what you’re offering. If you’ve done your homework and have a good sense of who your target market is, programmatic ads are a great way to ensure that your ads not only inform them about your brand, but that they become converts or customers of your brand as well.

Focus on Mobile

The explosive growth of 4G and 5G technology has been one of the most groundbreaking technological advancements of our age. While in the past, internet users were shackled to, at best, a laptop with a Wi-Fi connection, now, users can be online almost anywhere they find themselves. This has resulted in the exponential growth of users going online via their mobile devices, and the numbers bear this out. Of the estimated 4.6 billion people who access the internet on a daily basis, around half of them, or around 2.4 billion, use the net from a smartphone.

This means that advertisers who fail to optimise their ads for viewing on a mobile device risk alienating a huge number of their potential customers. Ensuring that an ad is optimised for mobile includes making sure that all text is legible on a smaller screen, and checking that colours and images render correctly on different resolutions and display formats. Generally, best practices these days dictate that these considerations are factored into ad design first, then scaled up to larger desktop displays as needed.

Implement Frequency Caps

One of the biggest advantages of programmatic is that they’re completely automated and don’t typically need to be micromanaged. Once ad buying parameters are set, the software will automatically search out and purchase the optimal ad space for your brand. However, this can sometimes result in ad saturation or repetition, wherein a brand's ad appears and reappears to the same user multiple times. Not only will this be unlikely to produce your desired outcome of brand awareness or potential sale; it’s possible that the user’s perception of your brand will be a negative one and actively deter them from engaging with your brand in any way from then on.

Prevent this from happening by using your ad platform’s settings to apply an ad frequency cap to specific users. Try to aim for an ad frequency of three at the absolute maximum. Studies indicate that users who are shown the same ad more than three times begin to actively dislike the brand they’re being shown, and are less likely to engage with it afterwards.

While the way advertising is executed these days may have changed, much of the discipline, and many of its objectives, remain the same. Keep this in mind when implementing your brand’s advertising strategy to prevent feeling overwhelmed by programmatic ads, and you’ll see a positive return on investment in no time at all.