Recently, there has been a huge shift in human behaviour on a global scale. Never before have we seen such a quick and drastic change come into effect in our society. With digital socialising on the rise, we’ve seen a surge in the number of impressions becoming available within the digital sphere.
As more traditional media formats try to adapt to the fluid world we currently live in, the programmatic space comes into its own.
So what is programmatic advertising, and what does this digital platform mean for brands right now?
According to the Display Trading Council, programmatic advertising is the use of automation in the buying and selling of media. Programmatic is the true automation of digital purchasing. It first began as a way to use up left over inventory and has rapidly evolved over recent years to include TV, streaming, voice, and digital out of home. Just trying to keep up with this media platform can appear to be quite over whelming.
Let’s begin to break it down: In essence agencies such as Golley Slater have a trading desk that give us access to a demand side platform (or DSP), and this means that we are able to select what impressions we want to buy and how many. A publisher such as Reach plc, have supply side platforms (or SSP’s) where they are able to offer up impressions to be bought. In the middle we have auctions (ad exchanges) that happen in real time, which are automated.
A Data Market Place (or DMP) is where the buying and selling of data occurs. This for us is where programmatic really comes into its own, and why it is the media platform of choice for many advertisers right now. There are lots more abbreviations and terms that can make the very consideration of programmatic seem too complicated.
Some of the more important points to take away from this are:
Adverts can be fast tracked through and published within 2 hours which compared to some Ad Networks is near instant.
With the vast amount of data at our fingertips we are also able to segment our audiences and reach different people with different messages. This could be as granular as “Watched Narcos on Netflix in the last 24 hrs” or “purchased Chanel no 5 in the last 7 days”
With clients in Wales, programmatic advertising enables Welsh language adverts to be served in display format; something not supported by other display providers.
Public sector and governmental clients are also rest assured that the integrity of the websites where adverts are displayed are of the highest quality. Our trading desk quality checks over 1 billion worldwide impressions daily and those that don’t make the cut are added to a black list.
Traditionally with programmatic suppliers, there is a long list of third party costs (whether that’s manpower costs, data supplier fees, or Ad Network premium)s – as we own the technology in-house we have access to all of the latest tools and targeting capabilities and we have eliminated almost all third party fees. For example, the data segment network is a built-in product within Xandr (our chosen programmatic partner) and we don’t need to pay for additional companies to plan and execute the work as everything is done in-house. Buying impressions through programmatic is a fraction of the cost of buying them through Ad Networks or with publishers directly which can be as eye wateringly high as 5,600% more expensive (based on CPM rate).