Programmatic buying dominates in the modern digital advertising industry. Moreover, experts predict that everything will be programmatic by 2030. Programmatic is not as difficult to understand and implement as it seems in the beginning. To make it simple, programmatic is the algorithmic buying of ad impressions in real-time. That means that the advertisement is shown to the right audience, at the right place and time.
Today, marketers start to reconsider the use of programmatic buying. Most of them find it a useful and effective way not only for direct responses but also for branding.
In this article we will look at how to take the advantage of programmatic for brands.
TARGETING THE RIGHT AUDIENCE
Every brand wants its ad message to reach the right person. Programmatic allows audience-targeting on a granular level, and creates segments based on various characteristics: geographic, demographic, behavioral, location etc. The main thing is to gather and analyze solid data about prospective customers. Third-party data is perfect for upper-funnel campaigns due to the ability to target based on granular details.
Choosing the right targeting options allows saving advertising budget and reducing spend on users that aren’t really interested in the product or service. Thanks to audience expansion strategies, brands can reach the right audience and spread brand awareness with the potential for later engagement and communication with users.
CROSS-DEVICE
Programmatic gives access to a huge network of publishers across numerous platforms. Today, brands should consider every digital touchpoint of the audience in order to interact with consumers at the right place and time. Programmatic allows simultaneous user reach across multiple devices such as desktop, mobile, tablet, smart TV and others. This helps boost awareness among users covering relevant channels with suitable ad formats.
BRAND SAFETY
Speaking of brand advertising campaigns, we can’t but mention the brand safety. Every brand is concerned about how the first impression can affect following interactions with the potential customer. Hence no one wants their ad to appear alongside controversial or offensive content and create negative associations.
Programmatic helps to minimize the possibility that the ad will appear in an inappropriate context environment. There are some methods for brand safety. Brands can use white or black lists, and negative keywords. NT made this process easier and less time-consuming. Marketers don’t need to make lists manually. With the help of Affinity List Builder, white list will be automatically generated. Brands can be sure their ad won’t appear on websites that can screw up their reputation.
VIEWABILITY
It goes without saying that brand advertising campaign viewability means a lot. No one wants to waste money on the advertisement that wasn’t shown. That’s why using the viewability metric is vital to understanding if the ad was actually seen. It allows the advertiser to track ad impressions that are viewed by real people.
REAL-TIME MEASUREMENT
Thanks to programmatic, brands can measure the performance of each advertisement in real-time. This allows advertisers to immediately analyze data, identify which ads work best, and which channels and formats are effective. Then, brands can optimize the advertising campaign if necessary and control ad expenditures. Advertisers can also use the Brand Lift tool that helps to evaluate the following brand metrics: brand awareness, ad recall and brand interest. Moreover, brands have an opportunity to track offline-conversions and to identify which channel and ad performs better.
So, despite some misconceptions that programmatic may not work for branding campaigns, it can really be a win-win situation. With the help of programmatic, brands can:
- Focus exclusively on the target audience
- Reduce advertising costs
- Measure and optimize advertising campaigns in real-time
- Not to worry about brand safety.
