Remember the prehistoric days of advertising when a company would saturate endless zipcodes with their print ads and then hope for the best?
When digital advertising started to explode in the early 2000s, old-school print ads became dinosaurs. New digital platforms allowed businesses to advertise all over the place to reach their target audience.
However, the proliferation of digital media has made it increasingly challenging (and expensive) to advertise on multiple platforms and across all devices. With countless channels out there, how can you know which is the one your target audience is interacting with right now?
The answer is the next wave of digital marketing—programmatic advertising.
We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but traditional digital advertising is also going the way of the triceratops. Today’s savvy businesses are instead using programmatic advertising, which optimizes in real-time to automate the buying and selling of ads to reach a more targeted audience than ever before.
Simply put: programmatic advertising allows your business to reach more people for less.
How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?
Programmatic advertising (aka programmatic marketing) uses algorithms to buy and sell ads. That means you don’t need to spend all your time looking at data and crunching numbers to figure out if your ads should be on Facebook, Google, Netflix, or wherever else.
Instead, algorithms will analyze your data during real-time bidding to place your ad where it is most likely to be seen by the audience you have designated and who will most likely engage based on behavioral targeting.
Now, this doesn’t mean you’ll turn everything over to the robots. You’ll still need to provide specific data, such as your target audience’s demographics, location, interests, similar purchases, devices, and even your competitor’s information. The more detailed information you can provide, the better.
Here’s a breakdown of what happens during the programmatic process. (Keep in mind that this all happens instantaneously, so there’s no lag time on the user’s end.)
- Someone visits a website
- The ad impression on that website goes up for auction
- Advertisers offer real-time bids for that impression
- The ad impression is awarded to the highest bidder
- The user sees the ad on the website
- If the ad is relevant and interesting, the user engages by clicking or immediately searching the brands and (hopefully) converts
With programmatic advertising, the algorithm decides which websites to bid on based on the data it has about your ideal audience. That means you don’t waste ad dollars on ad impressions your audience will never see.
Programmatic Advertising Benefits
Programmatic advertising is accessible for companies in every vertical and industry. Here are a few ways B2B, B2C, e-commerce, and other companies can benefit from programmatic advertising.
- Reduce overall ad-buying costs
- Get better ROI for your ad dollars
- Optimize ads to reach your ideal audience
- Get real-time insights that can help you make adjustments to optimize your ads
- Reduce ad fraud thanks to machine learning, which can identify fraudulent clicks
- Highly efficient CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) creates more brand awareness
- Create personalized ad experiences for users based on their demographics and experiences
Your ads can come in various formats, including banner ads, video ads, static display ads, and audio ads. Essentially, your ads can be created for wherever your target audience is listening, reading, or watching and on any connected device.
You Don’t Have to Do Programmatic Advertising Alone
Programmatic advertising is the most efficient and effective way to reach your audience without wasting ad dollars by throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks.
ZuuKeeper is an all-in-one programmatic advertising company that does it all. From ad creation to campaign launch plus ongoing optimization. We eat, sleep, and breathe, helping our clients grow their businesses in the most cost-effective way possible.
The programmatic advertising space can be a zoo!
You will need a ZuuKeeper.
Reach out to the ZuuCrew today to learn more about how we help businesses of all sizes create and launch effective programmatic ad campaigns
