Advertising has come a long way from the days of reading the classifieds on the back page of your local paper. If you haven’t noticed, machines run the world and humans are extremely mistake-prone. In marketing, human error could cost a company thousands, or as evidenced by Proctor & Gamble’s digital budget cut, millions. Programmatic advertising can fix that, but there’s a lot to consider before throwing your money at a computer.
Lucky for you, ChatterBlast University is offering a FREE 45-minute webinar on what programmatic advertising is and how to do it. You can register here. And keep reading for just a taste of what we’ll be covering.
So what is programmatic advertising?
Simply put, it’s the use of a software program to purchase or deliver digital ads through an exchange. Digital ads come in a lot of shapes and sizes, and they pop up on websites, apps, videos, billboards and bus stops. The problem with this is that unlike radio, tv and print ads, there’s an infinite amount of potential online. If a website increases its traffic, there are now more ad slots available for people to advertise with.
How does an advertiser take advantage of this?
Think of a gumball machine, where you put a quarter in, crank the knob and out pops a gumball. Programmatic direct advertising works exactly like a gumball machine, where a website publisher (think CBS, FOX, and other media companies that own their own websites) allows you to buy ads on their website at the cost and rules they set.
Programmatic Direct is a gumball machine, where you can only buy whatever’s in the machine at the price set by the person who owns the machine.
The incentive for the publisher is the ability to set costs and control who’s buying ads. The incentive for the advertiser is access to premium or protected content, and a guarantee that a certain number of people or impressions will be delivered on that website.
The other popular method of programmatic delivery is called ‘Real-Time Bidding’. Every time you see a digital ad, hundreds, thousands or even millions of auctions are happening within seconds to purchase that ad inventory. The auctions are set by an ad exchange, which makes a deal with the publishers to kick back a percentage of the sale. The winning advertiser gets their ad displayed at the highest cost of the auction, and the money goes back to the publisher.
Good news! Real time bidding uses machines, so you don’t have to guess a price to win an auction.
Ok, I get how it works. What now?
It’s time to do some research into what your digital marketing goals are and what tools you want to use to achieve those goals. Are you looking to drive traffic to your site? Increase brand awareness? Drive ticket sales?
Chances are there’s a platform that can get what you need done at a cost you can afford. Going directly to an ad buying platform might be pricey, and will likely take more effort than you can handle. Learning from our free webinar can help you develop a strategy, set Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and use the tactics suited to your business and audience to drive actions. Agencies also operate enough business to get you access to the platforms you can benefit from without the headache of dealing with reps yourself.
At ChatterBlast, every client is Oprah.
What kind of tactics are we talking?
There’s a LOT to learn. Here’s a bit more of what we’ll be covering:
- How to map out a service area and serve ads to people within that fence, which is called geofencing.
- Search retargeting to serve ads to users that have searched for specific terms you’ve come up with in a set amount of days
- Site retargeting to serve ads to people that have visited a specific website.
- Conquesting competitors by retargeting or serving ads based on their websites, geographic areas and keywords.
- Contextual advertising to serve ads on specific websites that fit into your business category, and can help provide value in a data protected world.
Yes, programmatic is complex. Scary? Not so much. Scary is spending your money on ads without measuring results. Scary is spending money and not seeing results at all. With ChatterBlast, we’ll work closely with you to make sure scary doesn’t happen. If you’re looking to dive into the programmatic world, reach out or register for our free webinar today.
