If you or your brand use digital advertising, you might have heard people talking about how programmatic advertising is disrupting digital marketing.
Your advertisement could be amazing, but if it’s not at the right place and targeted to the right consumers, then it will never fulfill its actual potential. So if you agree when people say that programmatic advertising is a game-changer, but don’t understand why then you’re at the right place.
In this article, we will be explaining what programmatic advertising is and what are contextual advertising best practices.
What is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the use of software to purchase contextual advertising. While the custom method involves tenders, quotes, requests for proposals, and negotiation, programmatic buying uses some software to buy and sell online advertising space.
It is a sophisticated way of programmatic display advertising, also it utilizes online display targeting and traffic data to drive impressions at scale which brings a better ROI for advertisers. It can also provide great results for both global brands and SMEs. So you shouldn’t ignore it just because your firm is small.
But, it’s not the whole automation of the ad buying process. Usually, you manually prepare ad tags or orders, which might be labor-intensive. With programmatic display advertising, advertisers have enough time for the optimization and betterment of ads to drive great campaign success.
What are Programmatic Advertising Tools and Platforms?
Programmatic ads are a great tool and global spending in 2020 topped almost $129 billion and reached $150 billion in 2021. The U.S is the biggest spender on programmatic advertising, but the UK and China are also not that far in the race.
Why is Programmatic Advertising Successful?
Yes, it is successful as it’s targeted, efficient, and scalable.
Two years ago, spending by US marketers on programmatic ads was around $60 billion. In 2023, that amount is estimated to rise to $133 billion which is around 91% of total digital ad spend.
Programmatic advertising is created to eliminate old-fashioned, hit-or-miss campaign structure. That system was costing advertisers way too much money.
Now, with the help of programmatic advertising, you can easily trust an algorithm that will explain where your ad money is best utilized. All you need to do is just fill in your contextual adverTising solution information about your ad campaign and key performance indicators, and the rest of the work will be done by the algorithm.
How Programmatic Advertising Can Help You Succeed?
Now that we’ve talked about the advantages of programmatic advertising, let’s discover how you can use it to your benefit in contextual advertising campaigns.
1. Understand your target marketplace
The first step is quite simple but essential: determine what’s involved in the marketplace by doing some research. As an advertiser, moving into a new place of advertising, you will discover many new terms and ideas, so take your time to understand them.
2. Set your goals
In digital marketing, it’s very important to know your goals from the beginning. To do this, use existing data to analyze the kind of advertising campaign awareness you want and create a strategy that will assist you in determining long and short-term goals.
3. Don’t forget the human touch
Only because programmatic ads depend on machines and algorithms, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require the human touch. There are various types of platforms, some of which provide half or fully-managed services while others offer technical platforms that allow you to run your programmatic activities.
From there, you will allocate skilled advertisers to plan, optimize, and control your buying. In the end, to enjoy success, you will need to discover the perfect combination between intelligent human intervention and automation. So don’t depend only on the algorithm to yield effective results for your ad campaign.
4. Protect your brand from fake news
The biggest challenge of programmatic advertising is that its dependency on algorithms can lead to advertisements appearing in the wrong place like websites that promote fake news.
To avoid this issue, make sure that your demand-side blocklist is updated and checked for inappropriate sites. Few platforms allow the exclusion of entire lists from ad spending, which can be really helpful.
If your product is sensitive, another option is to use a whitelist. It is generally a list of approved sites. It will increase your capacity to reach your target audience and will make it more expensive, however, it will guarantee that no offensive or explicit material is connected with your ad.
Learn How to Begin Using Programmatic Advertising?
For beginners in programmatic marketing, the best spot to start is by learning. Watch videos and webinars, listen to different podcasts about programmatic advertising, and connect with colleagues about the best practices.
Once you’re ready to get started, start with growing your advertising strategy, audience personas, and KPIs. It will assist you in your research about which programmatic ad networks and ad exchanges are suitable for you.
