What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is not as complex as it sounds. It is a way to buy automatically & manage digital campaigns, rather than buying them from publishers directly.

Programmatic advertising is an automatic approach of RTB, which will be used on a particular inventory for a particular set of users. 

Demystifying the Jargons of Programmatic Advertising:

Real-Time Bidding (RTB): Buying and selling of advertisement space online through real-time auction that occur in milliseconds. 

Demand-Side Platform (DSP): A software which is utilized by publicists to purchase advertisements consequently. A portion of the main DSP stages are Turn, MediaMath, Invite Media, and DataXu. 

Supply-Side Platform (SSP): Technology stage utilized by distributors to sell publicizing space consequently. A portion of the main SSP stages are Google, OpenX, Right Media, and PubMatic. 

Data Management Platform (DMP):  An information stockroom that is basically a product that has data about purchasers and clients. DMP holds data principally through cookies that are utilized for publicist focusing on.

Ad Exchange: Digital commercial center where publicists and distributors purchase and sell advertisements. A portion of the main advertisement trade stages for automatic publicizing are OpenX, The Rubicon Project, and Google. 

First-Party Data:  First-party data comes legitimately from the source, either the computerized distributer or the stage holder. For example, in the event that you decide to publicize on Facebook, you can get data about the crowd to tailor your campaign. 

Third-Party Data: Third-Party Data is any data gathered by an element that won't have an immediate relationship with the client the information is being gathered on. More often than not, It is gathered from an assortment of sites and stages and afterward is bunched together by outsider information suppliers, for example, DMP.

Self Serve Programmatic: Google offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - but there are agencies like Social Beat that offers a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns. This is known as Self Serve programmatic advertising.

Types of programmatic advertising

• Programmatic RTB: 

Like Google ads calculate the bidding in real-time for all advertisers, the same applies to Programmatic RTB.

RTB is done programmatically and the highest bidder's ad is displayed. Below are the steps on how it works -

1. The User visits a website
2. The Website communicates with an ad exchange/SSP
3. SSP offers information to DSPs
4. Advertisers place bids through a DSP
5. Highest bid wins the ad

• Private Marketplace (PMP):

Private marketplace works as RTB in similar sectors, which is available only to advertisers that require invitation. Usually publishers block or reserve premium ad inventory for some selected advertisers. Most of the demand side platforms have their own private marketplace which is exclusively available to DSP customers.

• Preferred Deals:

This is a type of deal where the advertisers chooses the ad inventory even before displaying in the private marketplace by open auction at a fixed price.

This is also called spot buying as the purchase and negotiation happens on the spot and targeting, pricing etc are agreed by both the parties.

The advertiser also gets to see the publisher’s ad inventory which can help in deciding whether or not to make a purchase depending on the ad impression.

• Programmatic Guaranteed:

This type of deal follows the usual path of media buying, where publisher & advertiser is given a chance of negotiating on one-on-one basis. Bidding process is not followed in programmatic guaranteed. Once the negotiation is over the inventory is sold to the advertiser.

Programmatic guaranteed is also called programmatic direct or automated guaranteed.

How does programmatic ad buying work?

Step 1: User clicks on a Landing page or website

Step 2: The owner of the site puts the ad up for auction

Step 3: Advertisers including competitors offer bids for the ad impression

Step 4: Highest bidder in the step 3 wins the auction

Step 5: winning ad is served on the website to the user who clicked on the ad

Last Step: Hopefully the user who clicked on the ad, converts!

The framework will assess the client examination once an advertisement is purchased on a portion of the measurements which is Behavior, Social commitment, Engagement level, Time per visit and Location. 

The above information from the measurements will help the framework in arranging, estimating and choosing what setting would be applicable to a particular client. In like manner the promotion would be shown as an advertisement on the applicable situation. 

For instance, when clients filter a few web journals which are identified with "Wellbeing and Fitness", The advertisement tech framework assesses and gauges the client conduct and shows a promotion that is identified with "offers on GYM Equipments" or "Sound eating routine food diagram". 

Through the above measures we can focus on the correct promotion to the ideal individual at the perfect time which reflects in expanding the proficiency of an advertisement campaign. While Google only offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - there are agencies like Social Beat that offer a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns.

Key Benefits of using Programmatic Advertising:

-Programmatic advertising works towards targeting your KPIs more closely which results in improving and increasing your overall ROI.

-With Programmatic advertising, advertisers have access to adjust metrics such as CPMs, CPCs, CPVs etc. which helps us in cost-effectiveness.

-There are a lot of things which we can explore on this platform. Gaining customer insights is one of them, and will enable you to take the learnings through programmatic technology and apply them across all types to improve overall advertising campaign performance, which results in a comprehensive marketing approach.

-Programmatic helps you to achieve your goal by reaching a larger audience which results in diversity and scalability. 

Frequency Capping Across Platforms

Control the frequency and analyze the performance of ads across multiple channels like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Native, OTTs and Publishers with the help of campaign manager and DV360

-Avoid overexposing ads to the same user across platforms 

-Acquire a wider pool of audience within the same budget. Thus, programmatic can help you get the best ROI.

-Get a single view of your audience across platforms 

Innovative and Interactive Ad Formats:

Create exclusive, interactive ads like Parallax, Flipbook, Cue Cards, and Audio banners

-Give your audience a better experience

-Drive engagement with your target audience 

-Helps increase CTR and boost Ad Recall

Premium Inventory & 3rd Party Lists:

-Access a more premium inventory and expand your reach across various publishers, OTT’s, audio streaming services, and third-party lists.

-Leverage 3rd Party Lists to reach niche audience segments relevant to your business

Improved Tracking on Programmatic:

-With improved targeting, you can optimize budget allocation with efficiency and produce elevated results

-Track impressions served to a single user across platforms

-Gives a view of the entire customer journey and overlap of audience across platforms for better Media Planning decisions

-Run Sequenced Messaging campaigns even on the Display Network to drive your audience down the marketing funnel 

Comprehensive Targeting:

-With comprehensive targeting options paired with audience insights and mining, you can optimize campaigns to deliver maximum results 

-Improved targeting using AI & Machine Learning with advanced bid strategies and data-driven creatives to deliver personalization to a target audience

-Leverage Combined Audience - Create a combined audience using Google Audience, 1st Party Audience & 3rd Party Audience to target even niche audiences effectively. 

Example - Your target audience is a CEO/CXO of a company size between 200-1000 in the US? 

That can be done!

The benefit with First-Party Data:

- As some of you might know, third Party Cookie tracking will be depreciated from Jan 2022 from Chrome (and soon other browsers). This is going to lead to many brands trying to build their first-party data and programmatic is best suited to manage this and build on your existing user data.

YouTube Trueview via DV360:

-Provides precise tracking with extensive targeting abilities 

-Explore Google Audiences, 1st and 3rd Party Data, also create combined audiences to reach the right target audience 

-Track post view and view through conversation for large scale trueview and bumper campaigns

-Leverage AI & ML for better-optimized campaigns

-Track Completed views and CPCV and not just views and CPV. 

Few Disadvantages of leveraging Programmatic Advertising:

Transparency from your agency: Since programmatic is usually executed via the agency, it’s very important to have access to the dashboard to understand key metrics. Most programmatic platforms also allow partners to add a % of their fee to the media cost (screenshot from DV360 below). It is known as Partner Cost in DV360. For example, if the CPM is INR 200, the partner can add a 20% margin on it wherein your dashboard would show a CPM of INR 240 (20% higher than INR 200)

Privacy issues: Privacy concerns have arisen as programmatic ads are based on individual internet user's information. This applies to most forms of digital media advertising.

Ad blockers: Most internet users complain about how the ads pop up then have resorted to using ad blockers or using search engines like DuckDuckGo and this trend is likely to increase.

Create a Programmatic campaign in just 3 steps:

Step 1 — All about Strategy

Firstly select your marketing campaign goal, then choose the type of programmatic ad campaign which would be suitable to your goal and strategy and lastly in the first stage would be to sign up for the right demand side platform.

Step 2 — Execution

First step in the execution is to set the estimated budget of your advertising campaign. Next would be selecting the basic targeting options. Last option is to select the creative type and upload the same.

Step 3 — Optimization

-To optimize the campaign the first step is to Receive Real-Time Reports and Analyze the data.

-According to the Analyzed data optimize the campaign settings

-Customize the targeting based on the analysis and Retarget the users who didn't convert

Optimization Secrets:

1. Allow the campaign time to collect enough data so you're able to take a data-driven approach, Try not to optimize excessively fast 
2. Similar to the previous point, Try not to optimize too often or too rarely as this will again not give the system enough data to collect. Always give enough time, spend & data between the changes.
3. It is important to monitor all the progressions made even if it’s a small one. This record will help us to see what changes produce what results so that you can measure and alter the changes accordingly

Deep dive into Display & Video 360

DV360 is the extended version of DCM (DoubleClick Bid Manager), Campaign Manager, Data Studio & lastly Audience Center. This tool acts as a single tool which can be used for planning, organizing, designing, finding inventory, buying inventory, measuring & optimizing campaigns. Find out how we achieved a greater brand reach for a BFSI client using DV360.

What can be done in Display & Video 360?

-Collaborate across teams

-Gain transparency and control

-Get faster, smarter insights

Display & Video 360 is grouped around five integrated segments:

1. Campaigns: 

This is where you build and execute the media plan. You can create, optimize & monitor the campaigns, Line items & Insertion orders.

2. Audiences:

This is where you manage your audiences. Audiences can be set based on frequency caps, Audience bucket can be created & Audience profile analysis also can be made in this segment.

3. Creatives:

Here, you tie your creative strategy to your data and your media plan. There are different variations of creatives, below are the following-

1. The ad Canvas: You can design the ads visually with real-time previews on the Ad Canvas
2. The Format Gallery: You can discovery new innovative formats, experiment them on Ad canvas & also browse Google Web Designer templates for custom solutions

c: Data-driven Creatives: You can create a variation of your message which suits with different audiences

4. Inventory:

This segment allows you to discover and manage high-quality inventory from top broadcasters and publishers, which also includes exploring new opportunities in Marketplace and negotiating deals

5. Insights:

All the campaign metrics can be found in this segment which helps in analyzing and measuring the performance across Display & Video 360 and take action on those results.