From Nobody to Glory: How Programmatic Advertising Makes Your Brand Pop

People who’re from the ‘90s, raise their hands, please.

Those were simple days and, no doubt, one of the best days as long as I can remember. You had genuine friends. People were hard-working, and everyone loved the simplicity.

I still remember me, and my elder brother used to play video games for eight hours straight — no distraction, just plain old focus. Even the advertisements on the television were easy to understand — a simple story behind an ad followed by a CTA.

Move the wheel a decade later, and everything feels like a mess. Today the average attention span of a normal human has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds, which is even lower than a goldfish.

Can you recall the number of brands trying to connect with you every day on your smartphone?

Most of the people will say that the number is too big to remember.

So what can your brand do to break away from the clutter?
As they say, desperate times call for desperate solutions. One of the solutions for capturing the attention of today’s consumer is programmatic advertising.

With over a billion websites and mobile apps out there, it is nearly impossible to know which of the channels are the best fit for broader audience reach.

Several ad platforms can be used to target and find customers. But will these ads reach your target audience?

Of course. With programmatic advertising, you’ll be able to target your customers in an AI-based efficient manner.

Let’s get a more in-depth look at what exactly is programmatic advertising.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is a form of advertising that uses artificial intelligence and real-time bidding to automate, streamline the ad buying process.

Programmatic advertising is more like how modern investing works. You specify your portfolio on what amount of budget do you want to invest in various stocks and bonds and what your risk tolerance is, and then the software program will determine the best path to your financial success.

Put, the brands and agencies use the Demand Side Platform (DSP) to buy and understand how much they should pay for it, while the publishers use Supply Side Platform (SSP) to sell the available ad space to brands.

I know what you must be thinking, acronyms like DSP, SSP, or even DMP ( Data Management Platform) can make programmatic advertising seem hard to understand, but in reality, it is simple.

One significant advantage of programmatic advertising is that it offers guaranteed impressions. Even before the impressions are shown, the buyer and seller decide on a price upon which impressions will go live. When a brand needs to extend its reach, marketers can bid for real-time impressions.

Is Programmatic Advertising even Necessary?

All humans always wanted was efficiency. Right from the caves, they looked for bigger stones to lit fire, in the 90s it was all about efficient personal computers, and up till now, it is about efficient workforce,  efficient business, and efficient people.

Before programmatic ad buying or programmatic media buying, it was all about humans buying ads from expensive platforms that are, at times, unreliable.

With Programmatic advertising technology, buying and selling ads got cheaper. By removing humans, who can get sick or need to sleep or even get work hungover, systems got more efficient because machines never stop.

The Three Myths of Programmatic Advertising

Robots replacing humans, is that a good sign?

It’s good and bad at the same time. Till now, technology was being used for menial tasks that took so much time for humans. Tasks like dealing with ad tags and sending updates to publishers, but still, when it came to optimizing campaigns and strategizing things, humans were used.

With programmatic technology, it will give both marketers and sellers to spend to invest their precious time in more sophisticated activities like customizing campaigns.

Is Programmatic Buying the Same as Real-time bidding?

No, it is not. Real-time bidding is a form of programmatic ad buying.

In real-time bidding, the ad purchase is made via real-time auctions. While the programmatic software allows marketers to purchase ad impressions in advance that are guaranteed to deliver results, this form of buying is frequently known as “programmatic direct.”

Is it the future of ad buying?

Maybe yes. For now, it is impossible to tell what portion of advertising is done programmatically, but it is trending in the digital market. Some of the professional social media marketing agencies are now keen to buy as much digital space as possible with programmatic channels, while large-scale brands have a team of in-house experts that handle their programmatic ad buying.

As of now, it is just online ads that are sold programmatically, but there is no doubt that ad agencies will figure out a way to sell “traditional” media ads, including TV spots and out-of-home ads.

The Final Say

If you are not taking advantage of programmatic advertising in some capacity already, you are missing out on the potential to save money and see better performance in your online advertising campaigns. If you need help launching your digital marketing efforts, feel free to drop us a message.