Programmatic advertising is technology that allows companies to buy or sell display, video, audio, and in-app ads anywhere people are hanging around online. Programmatic advertising platforms like the one we offer at SEO Design Chicago, the Active Pixel Program, also allow you to see – in real time – what people do when they encounter one of your ads. Do they do nothing? Click on it? Click on it and then do something else? Our software then makes a decision, in less than a second, about if you should keep running the same ad in the same place based on that data.
There’s a lot of programmatic ad technology out there. Some popular platforms include Google AdWords, LinkedIn, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads. 
Our Active Pixel Program allows you to harness the technology to run ads on one, or all, of these places.
If you want to hire a company to handle your programmatic advertising needs, here’s what you should make sure they know, and can explain to you.
Table of Contents
1. The Differences Between Demand Side Advertising, Supply Side Platforms and Ad Exchanges
Demand Side Platforms are like the Google Advertising Network. Instead of sending your ads to unknown sites, a demand-side platform allows companies to bid automatically on spaces for ads on ads across a variety of mediums, from websites to Hulu to social networking sites.
Supply side platforms help the owners of those mediums (the websites and other mediums mentioned above) find buyers for those advertising spaces.
Ad exchanges are the digital marketplaces where sellers, buyers, ad networks, and advertisers buy and sell space and ads.
Our Active Pixel Program is a proprietary algorithm that helps every stakeholder in all of the positions above get the results they want.
to make sure you’re not spending too much money on ads, and that your ads are top quality.
2. Make Sure the Programmatic Advertising Specialists have a Proven Track Record
We’ve been helping companies handle their digital marketing and advertising needs for over ten years. That experience matters, because we have seen technology change and adapt.
Check out our reviews. You’ll find dozens of customers who attest that we’re excellent programmatic advertising specialists.
3. Make Sure the Programmatic Advertising Specialists Have You Set Up Multiple Goals
Before you start building your programmatic advertising campaign, a good specialist will help you brainstorm your goals. Do you want to drive visitors to your website, generate intake leads, get more phone calls, have people fill out a contact form, or amp up brand awareness? Or is your goal to boost sales of a certain product, encourage individuals to join an email list, or increase social media subscribers?
4. They Should Help You Figure Out What Keywords Your Ads Should Contain
Ads are a combination of words, photos and videos. Ad specialists like us know exactly what makes an ad appealing and encourages someone to take action.
We know what words to include in ads because we’re masters of keyword research.
Sometimes, keywords are single words, but more often than not, they are phrases.
5. Programmatic Specialists Should Know How Much to Pay Without Overpaying
We research what the average costs for ads in your industry are. We then set up your programmatic ads so that you have a maximum “bid” on certain ads that will appeal to certain places. It’s critical to have a programmatic advertising specialist monitor if your ads are paying off. We do this by looking at those goals, then looking at analytics reports to you. If an ad isn’t doing what you want it to do, you want to change your strategy. There’s no reason to throw money away.
6. Programmatic Ad Specialists Should be Able to Explain the Process So You Understand It
You shouldn’t be asking yourself, “What?” after talking to programmatic ad specialists. It’s actually pretty simple. It works like this:
- When a person lands on a website with programmatic ad spaces, the website sends the visitor’s data (which includes things like their age, past purchases and more) to an ad exchange.
- The ad exchange evaluates the user’s data, including browsing behavior and demographic details. This data is then presented to advertisers competing for that customer in real time, and an auction begins. You don’t have to be monitoring the auction. Our algorithm, the Active Pixel Program, already knows what you’re willing to pay for your ad to appear in front of what users.
- If the data matches the type of client you want to target, our Active Pixel Program places a bid.
- Once the bidding is finished, the ad exchange chooses the highest bid and shows that company’s ad to the user.
- After the ad is displayed, feedback metrics such as clicks, impressions, and conversions are collected. This data helps advertisers refine their future bidding strategies and targeting criteria.
7. Programmatic Ad Specialists Should Know What Makes an Ad Compelling
Advertising has both a business and creative side. At SEO Design Chicago, we’re specialists in both. We understand data, goals, and budgets (that’s the business side). But we’re also design experts and wordsmiths. We get what makes creative ads work – they need to have compelling language that includes a call to action. Great ads include hyperlinks and interesting visuals. The best ads have some element of personalization.
Our suggestions include:
- Being descriptive in the main ad headline and text. This will help your audience understand your message.
- Including a clear CTA (call to action), so your audience knows how to act on their interest.
- Being targeted towards a specific audience, but not too narrow. We suggest starting off by choosing the ideal client’s location and two other targeting criteria to start.
We also test our ads on a small sample before we go “live” to the public. Here’s an example of testing.
We test the ad copy by showing a test two options:
- An ad with only a headline and/or ad description included in the copy.
- Only a headline
We also test the visuals by trying out to options:
- A square image near the center of the ad.
- An ad with a company logo, custom icon, or photo
Want proof programmatic ads work?
They worked for Audi.
They used programmatic ads and achieved amazing success by doing this.
The company invested in programmatic ads on Google. They reported a conversion rate four times higher than ads bought using traditional methods.
The system they used allowed them to display dynamic creative ads tailored towards each visitor profile. That means each person saw an ad for a different car (one out of more than 6,000 combinations) based on their demographic info and past online behaviors.
Our Active Pixel Program is powerful enough to allow a similar type of configuration for your target audience.
What Else do You Need to Know Before Hiring a Programmatic Ad Specialist?
You can and should pay for ads. But good programmatic advertising specialists will know how you can build brand awareness, get leads and generate sales through free methods.
This free way is to use search engine optimization (SEO). This means doing nearly 200 things – ranging from including certain keywords are all over your website to making sure the website loads fast – to every web page that’s published. When a page is optimized for search engines, it ranks higher in the free, organic section of search engine results pages (SERP). These are the websites and snippets that appear under the “sponsored” and “People also ask” sections of SERP.
We’ll make sure that your website has the right keywords in the exact places on a web page that Google likes to see them. These places include page titles (i.e. the words that appear in the tabs of web browsers), the top of every page, within the body of text on every page, and embedded into images (yes, you can embed words into images).
We’ll revise existing pages on your site, and create new content for you on a regular basis. In fact, the more new content that appears on your site, the more likely it is that Google will rank your site higher and higher in their free organic search results.
SEO Design Chicago will use our Active Pixel Program to make sure your programmatic ads are appearing where they should. For some businesses, that may be Amazon or Hulu.
Reach out to us so we can discuss programmatic advertising and other advertising methods. We offer a free SEO audit of your website, or we can just jump into talking about your digital advertising needs.
Contact Us Today!