Creating powerful programmatic ads for digital: What marketers need to know

Image Credit: Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
Image Credit: Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

In order to broaden their audience and manage campaigns more efficiently, more and more digital advertisers are turning to programmatic ad strategy. According to Emarketer, by 2021, programmatic ad spend will account for 88% of all US digital display ad spends, or $81 billion. While the sector is rapidly expanding and developing, many people may find it difficult to keep up.

In this article, Adgully seeks to analyse what programmatic advertising is, how it works, its benefits and how to apply it to brands’ advertising strategies.

In 2021, the digital advertising industry in India spent roughly 60% of its ad spends on direct media purchases, with the remaining 40% spent on programmatic purchases. Overall, projections show that the industry will shift more to programmatic advertising in the coming years, with a market share of nearly 45 per cent by 2023. Adoption of programmatic media buying, according to industry experts, would provide advertisers with greater flexibility and control over their creatives and optimisation capabilities.

Commenting on the skillsets required to exploit the potential of programmatic advertising, Iti Kaul, Head of Digital, OMD India, said, “Programmatic advertising can be likened to an iceberg; we see the tip of it, but things go much deeper than that. Over the years, it has picked up prominence because of three things primarily – it is a tech-based response to an age-old question advertisers have had about single-view transparent campaigns on digital media; it allows the brand to communicate with consumers on multiple touchpoints seamlessly. Programmatic allows and enables all transactions and media buys to be transparent and in greater control of advertisers. At Omnicom, we believe in transparent operations, thus making programmatic based deployment an integral part of our digital product for our clients.”

Adding further, Kaul said, “Today, an omni-channel experience is key and programmatic advertising ensures unification of multiple sources to provide brands with an opportunity to create seamless consumer experiences. It is important for organisations to look at programmatic advertising as not an option, but as the very foundation of the strategic product that we have. The enriched data supply coming in from millions of data sources act as a solid guide for building airtight strategies for our clients.”

“Secondly, as an organisation, one needs to be prudent about handling data that is used for different purposes – ranging from strategic initiatives to media activations and measurement. At Omnicom, we do not own any data and thereby, are able to leverage the potential of the medium to its fullest without a bias. The scale of the opportunity is evidently vast; the trick is, however, to find the perfect balance between being effective and while staying efficient for our clients. The two essential things to consider here are how we approach a solution while keeping the resultant impact in mind and how we ultimately measure the success,” she added.

Further explaining how to create a strong programmatic ads strategy, Kaul stressed on ‘Knowing your customer’, stating, “The most essential part is focusing on knowing the consumer better. This can be achieved through looking at the digital footprints left behind by the consumers and seeing what they are drawn towards, including websites they visit and products they tend to purchase. We primarily use the aforementioned signals to define consumer personas that are mutually exclusive and relevant for a brand from a communication/ product promise standpoint.”

Sharp & specific messaging

Secondly, a brand’s messaging strategy should be able to ensure relevance for the distinct consumer personas. In this digital era, consumers are increasingly demanding personalisation, and programmatic ads allow the kind of flexibility needed to have tailor-made content targeted at the right people. With AI-driven innovation at play, businesses can both cut down costs and target specific demographic groups. Traditional advertising is now seen as a long and drawn-out process that involves utilising multiple active resources. Programmatic considerably negates that problem and provides better reach in the process.

Smart Activation

The infusion of the right message with the right audience, when activated on the right touch points, is when the magic happens. Technology can make this a far lesser logistical nightmare than it used to be. Omnicom’s strategic partnership with creative tech firms allows us to create and deploy campaigns at scale with minimum human intervention and maximum campaign effectiveness.

Sugandha Varshney, Lead - Digital Marketing, Dizo, noted, “With programmatic advertising, you can reach your target audience faster and easier on multiple devices and publishers (apps, OTT platforms, games, music platforms, news platforms, etc.) through one single platform (for example, MediaSmart, DoubleClick, Adobe). Further, with a unified view of your audiences running multiple campaigns, you can leverage data and learning to optimise campaigns towards specific goals and achieve greater impact.”

GATE approach

To create a strong programmatic ads strategy, one needs to follow the GATE (Goal, Audience, Technology, Engagement) Approach. Have a clear campaign goal and KPIs – ensure your goals are clear, measurable, and attainable. The goal can be around generating more online sales or increasing brand awareness or perhaps around influencing offline consumer behaviour, etc.

Once the goal is closed, start by gathering and analysing data from multiple sources to determine your advertising needs. Segment your audience based on the information you gathered with data sources, around age groups, location, gender, interest, behaviour, etc., so as to narrow it down as much as possible to the most relevant segment.

Further, you would need to select the right platform and technology as per your requirement. A few of key factors for which could be as follows:

  • Will a DSP, DMP, or ad exchange offer the reach, segmentation, and channels necessary to connect with your target market?
  • How will the platform charge you? Will impressions be charged on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis? Are there any hidden fees?
  • What purchasing models will you need to support? Programmatic direct? RTB? PMP? If buying ads directly, will your platform be able to connect to the publisher’s system?
  • Will a DSP provider be able to integrate with your data management platform?
  • Will the platforms you’re considering be able to support a cross-channel strategy?

“At last, everything might not work well if the ad formats are not engaging and appealing to the target audience. One needs to create eye-catching creatives which would stand out among thousands of ads users encounter each day, and a lot of creativity should be going in deciding the right ad to be served after Goals, Audience & Technology has been closed to finally hit the nail on the head,” Varshney added.

Elaborating on how a marketer can successfully use programmatic advertising, Deepti Bhadauria, Chief Strategy Officer, HiveMinds, a unit of Madison World, said, “Marketers have to understand that programmatic doesn’t make display work like performance campaigns; however, it can make display campaigns effective. With programmatic, we can plan integrated campaigns with minimum duplication of reach and accurate attribution. The challenge with display campaigns is mostly the measurement of impact. With programmatic, we have the opportunity to eliminate variables such as reach duplication, minimum impressions delivered, etc., to be able to accurately measure impact on KPIs such as brand searches or site visits.”

Bhadauria also provided some tips to take programmatic advertising to the next level:

  1. Use programmatic to marry 1P (first-party) and 3P (third-party) data to reach the best user cohorts. It helps in identifying new customer cohorts by delving deeper into customer insights and learning about the other preferences of our core customer segments. There are many options to target using location, behaviour, affinity or usage of certain types of apps, etc.
  2. Invest in creative innovations and use programmatic to maximise reach for those.
  3. Use programmatic to run experiments. Brands spend enormous amounts of money on creative campaigns; with programmatic, marketers can run a plethora of experiments to find the best possible creative formats (audio, connected, native video, etc.), for the brand goal and feed it to the creative teams.
  4. Control the narrative by specifying the type of publishers you want your ads to run on. There is no point in advertising a high-end sedan on mass news channels just to get maximum impressions.
  5. Keep expanding: Explore premium private marketplaces and publishers, as well as the new ad exchanges.

Mitesh Kothari, Co-Founder and CCO, White Rivers Media, pointed out, “In a world overwhelmed by all kinds of ads, grabbing the attention of your target group is no picnic. Understanding your customer journey, identifying key touchpoints, and micro-segmenting your audiences are some critical practices for effective programmatic advertising. Retargeting has proved to be up to three times more successful in generating engagement than targeting new audiences. Moreover, video ads are more engaging than any other type of content, making them the best option for programmatic advertising.”

“There are no secrets here. An effective programmatic advertising plan is built on solid fundamentals, tests, and trials. Using past data to optimise your strategies and properly segment your target audience plays a pivotal role. Having crystal clear goals along with stand-out creative communication is still the essential part. Furthermore, ensure that your customers have a good experience throughout the process and that you track every bit of it for further use,” Kothari concluded.

The best minds in Data Analytics, Programmatic, Martech, Metaverse, AI/ AR/ VR will offer deep insights into this dynamic and evolving field at the inaugural edition of Adgully’s DATAMATIXX 2022. Click here to know more and to register.

Exclusives
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment