After years of pandemic crisis and ongoing economic uncertainty, brands are searching for better ways to increase their efficiency in advertising.

While traditional digital advertising and paid search can undoubtedly help grow brand awareness and influence ROI, they are only two tools within the larger toolbox that businesses need to efficiently scale their brands within budget in 2023.

There are roadblocks in the advertising process that may make efficiency seem impossible. For example, internal marketing teams are forced to spend far too much time manually adjusting their marketing processes, leading to stunted campaign launches and less-effective iterations.

The good news is, brands now have the option of implementing advertising automations to relieve their marketing teams of time-consuming manual tasks, all while boosting brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. How? Through the power of programmatic advertising.

How does programmatic advertising work?

While paid search can bump campaign content higher on search results pages and manual digital advertising can give marketers a very hands-on look at campaign results, programmatic advertising expands on these tools and uses machine learning and complex algorithms to automate the process of media buying. Instead of wasting time negotiating for ad space, programmatic advertising enables brands to automate and improve the ad buying process.

The automation of buying and selling ads is driven by research on user activity. With this data, programmatic advertising ensures that ads serve the right person, in the right place, and at the right time. Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to control the target audience, bidding strategy, budget, placements, creative and assets. Brands of all sizes can implement programmatic advertising, and it can be used to buy ads across multiple platforms to meet and exceed brand advertising goals. Programmatic advertising takes advertising to the next level.

Programmatic is not a new advertising trend; it has a proven record of accomplishment for reducing ad spend, reaching more customers, optimizing ad management, and increasing revenue. Programmatic advertising relies on the interconnection of three major types of platforms to function. To better understand how the process works, let’s take a quick look at the three platform types.

• Supply-side platforms (SSPs). Publishers use this type of platform to capture and sell ad impressions, including relevant customer data about website visitors, to advertisers in real time. Publishers can sell ad space on their websites, apps or other digital spaces. Examples of supply-side platforms include:

  

  • Google Ad Manager

  • Amazon Publisher Services

  • OpenX

  • Google AdMob

• Demand-side platforms (DSPs). Advertisers use these platforms to bid on these ad impressions across multiple platforms simultaneously, with impressions delivered to the highest bidder. Demand-side platforms also allow advertisers to filter target audiences by geographic and demographic data points. Popular demand-side platforms include:

  • Display & Video 360 (Google)

  • The Trade Desk

  • Amazon DSP (Demand side platforms)

  • LiveRamp

• Ad exchanges. Ad exchanges function as a sort of digital marketplace where publishers and advertisers can connect. Publishers submit ad impressions and advertisers bid on them in real time. These platforms allow SSPs to flow their ad inventory to DSPs and, based on the competitiveness of the inventory, ad prices can fluctuate. Examples of ad exchanges include:

  • Xandr (Microsoft)

  • Verizon Media

  • Open X

  • PubMatic

Benefits of Programmatic Advertising

Above all else, programmatic advertising saves your brand time and money.

The process can be scaled to fit any budget. Programmatic ads are typically bought on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis, and commonly range between $0.50 and $2.00 depending on audiences, platforms, and competition.

Programmatic allows businesses to automate and personalize campaigns across digital platforms, which means marketing teams can gather and analyze insights and then adjust campaigns at far greater speeds and with much greater accuracy than ever before.

Programmatic advertising offers your brand:

• Large-scale audience reach and retargeting

• Improved omni-channel audience targeting

• Hyper-personalization capabilities

• Increased relevant impressions and conversions

• Real-time data insight and analysis

• Measurable and transparent results

• Ability to utilize first and third-party data

• Opportunities for cross-device campaign strategies

• Scalable campaigns for all budgets

• Systems can be built to repeat

• Increased strategic control

• Reduced campaign lag/accelerated campaign progress;

• Reduced human error and complexity

Whether your brand chooses to dive into automated ad buying on its own or decides to share the creative process with a media agency like (amp), it is worth exploring the multitude of benefits programmatic offers that improve your brand’s overall targeting, efficiency, and ROI.

If programmatic advertising seems like a great fit for your brand, the first step is to study and research your audience and ad goals to explore how automated ad buying could work for you.

The (amp) team has years of experience partnering with clients to create successful programmatic advertising. To learn more about our programmatic services, as well as how programmatic can help you manage your ads efficiently and unlock the potential of your next campaign, visit the (amp) website or contact us for a consultation.