What is Programmatic Marketing?

 Programmatic marketing means that you rely on algorithms, various websites, software, and tech platforms to perform key tasks in your marketing plan related to brand awareness and advertising.  Programmatic, however, does not mean artificial intelligence pulls the strings. Humans make all of the decisions. Technology simply does the mundane tasks so that you can free up your time to perform higher level business operations.

Programmatic marketing also means you’re not tied to your computer at unreasonable hours. More time to think about big picture issues? More time to enjoy your non-work life? Who wouldn’t say yes to those things? Here, we take a closer look at programmatic marketing, explore the pros and cons, and predict future trends. 

 

What is Programmatic Marketing? 

Programmatic marketing is the system companies use to let automated technology increase brand awareness and interactions with potential clients. It includes, but is not limited to programmatic advertising, which is the purchasing and selling digital advertising space in real time using algorithms and data.

Traditional marketing and advertising include dealing with many people to handle marketing, public relations, and ads.  Programmatic marketing relies on technology to handle the nitty gritty details. 

This technology-driven marketing strategy enables companies to target very specific audiences with messages at the right time of day across various digital platforms, including websites, apps, texts, and social media.

At SEO Design Chicago, we have been using programmatic marketing since it first began popping up in the early 2000s. We know the best and most cost efficient ways to incorporate programmatic marketing into your business operations. We can help you set up programmatic marketing dashboards and run regular reports so you can change your strategy when needed. 

 

What Are Some Examples of Programmatic Marketing? 

Let’s talk about some programmatic advertising tools. 

 

Demand-Side Platforms (DSP)

 A DSP is any type of technology that allows companies to buy and run ads in multiple places in real time. Companies can define their target audience, set campaign objectives (like email newsletter sign ups, purchases, or phone calls), and set budgets within the DSP dashboard, which then uses algorithms to win auctions for advertising spots on websites or on streaming services that run ads, like Hulu. Examples of DSPS include Facebook Ads Manager and Amazon Advertising Platforms. At SEO Design Chicago, we have our own proprietary DSP called the Active Pixel Program. We can teach you how to use it, or run ad campaigns for you. 

 

Supply-Side Platforms (SSP)

An SSP is the ying to a DSP’s yang. It’s any technology used by publishers to manage and sell their ad inventory space. SSPs provide publishers with ways to set pricing rules, like the minimum bid they’ll accept to run an ad, and control which advertisers can bid on their websites or airwaves. Google Ads is the ultimate example of an SSP. It’s a tool that allows Google to sell “sponsored ad” space as well as the video ads that run on Google owned properties, like YouTube. We’ve helped dozens of companies maximize their Google Ad campaigns. We have written case studies that show how our recrafting of Google Ad campaigns has resulted in more web traffic, increased leads, and boosts in profits. 

 

Ad Exchanges

An ad exchange is like a farmer’s market, a place where farmers sell produce and flowers to customers.  However, ad exchanges are digital spaces where ad inventory is bought and sold in real time through a virtual auction. Companies bid on available ad space to the audiences they want to target, and the highest bidder wins the ad space to run an ad to the targeted audience. Google Ads is an ad exchange and an SSP. 

 

Data Management Platforms (DMP)

A DMP collects and breaks down data from various sources to create different groups based on demographics like age and location, behaviors like what they’ve purchased in the past, and other criteria. These groups are then uploaded to SSPs, so companies can choose which audiences they want to target. DMPs also show companies who buy ads what happens after a person sees an ad. Do they click on it? Hover over it? Take a specific action? These reports are available in real time.  They’re a little hard to understand at first. We often train companies how to read these reports and make strategic decisions about ads once patterns emerge. 

Programmatic advertising is often a term used interchangeably with programmatic marketing. But at SEO Design Chicago, we use a lot of algorithms and tools to help with digital marketing efforts.

For example, we schedule social media posts (and ways for companies to approve them before they’re published) well in advance using various tools. 

We use email newsletter tools to target specific audiences. These email newsletters often include personalized messages, like the person’s name or mentions of what they’ve done in the past. 

We’ll help you with programmatic advertising but also encourage you to think about how the programmatic spirit can be infused into your other marketing efforts. 

 

 Benefits of Programmatic Marketing

 

Advanced Targeting 

Programmatic marketing allows companies to target specific people based on indicators of what you’d like them to do after coming across your ad. These actions include making a purchase, adding an item to a cart or inquiring about services or goods. When we talk about targeting, we mean high-powered targeting. With DMPs, you can find the most specific of groups to display ads to, like women over 40 who are in charge of cat food purchases for their household. Why show an ad that specific to everyone? With programmatic advertising, only the specific customers you’d like to engage with see your ad. So you pay less for more precise visibility. 

 

Real-Time Changes and Results

 With real-time data access, companies can change their ad campaigns in seconds. That means you can quickly change the target group, the ad itself, and your bid price. For example, if a landscaping company knows a big storm knocked down many trees in a certain area, they can target homeowners in that zip code, offering tree branch removal as soon as the storm passes. 

 

Efficiency 

Automation makes the ad buying process less laborious for people. The old way involved phone calls and emails, which means your talented staff couldn’t focus on the bigger picture issues. With programmatic marketing, companies can let technology run ads while they do the things only real people can do really well – like dealing with customers, making sales and more. 

 

And the Price is Right

Programmatic marketing often leads to a higher ROI compared to traditional ad methods. There’s no reason to pay a lot to show your ad to everyone in the world when you really can only sell your goods or services to people in a certain area. 

 

The Downsides to Programmatic Advertising

While programmatic marketing offers many perks, it also comes with a share of challenges and considerations:

 

Fraud

The automated nature of programmatic advertising makes it susceptible to hackers and companies that try to fake clicks with bots. All good digital marketing experts, like us, know how to employ fraud detection tools. Our Active Pixel Program, a proprietary tool we developed for programmatic marketing, includes fraud detection and prevention measures to protect our clients’ campaigns.

 

Bad Ad Placement

 Since everything is automated, companies could potentially have their ads displayed alongside inappropriate or harmful content if proper brand safety measures are not in place. Our Active Pixel Program, and constant monitoring of ads, can help clients feel reassured that their ads won’t appear in places that don’t align with a client’s values and mission. 

 

Data Privacy

Programmatic advertising relies almost entirely on data collection and targeting. The public understands privacy more than they did 5 years ago. Governments are also regulating data collection much more than they used to. Our Active Pixel Program is compliant with data privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

 

Is All of This Really Necessary? 

Technology can be tiresome. It seems like every week, there’s some new app or tool that everyone is using. Companies are told they must have their fingers and toes in everything from Facebook to TikTok. 

Some tech trends do disappear. Remember Ask Jeeves, one of the first search engines? 

But programmatic advertising won’t go away. Companies need to understand it, and play the programmatic game if they want their business to survive, and more importantly, grow and thrive. At this point, not running ads programmatically would be akin to NOT having a Facebook or Instagram account. 

The future of programmatic marketing is bright. Experts have estimated that programmatic advertising will account for 87% of global digital ad spend by 2026. According to thought leaders, those drawbacks will be overcome with ethical AI solutions in the coming years. 

So reach out to us for a consultation about programmatic advertising and our unique solution. We call it the Active Pixel Program and we can tell you more about it when we talk.

We don’t want to reveal everything in this post – we don’t want our competitors to steal our great idea. But we do want companies out there to benefit from our tools.