Experts project that $60 billion total will be spent in 2021 on programmatic advertising alone. This AI-based advance in digital marketing is set to continue its growth in the coming years, which is precisely why many businesses are turning to specialists and choosing to work directly with a programmatic advertising agency.
What Is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is a marketing technique that enables brands to buy and optimize media campaigns automatically, replacing previous systems that required manual purchases directly from publishers. Programmatic advertising uses both machine learning as well as artificial intelligence to increase campaign efficiency and performance transparency for both the advertiser and the publisher. This form of advertising uses the latest in real-time auction technology to purchase advertisements at the precise moment it will be most impactful.
It’s critical to work with a media agency that is on top of current trends because the greatest value-add an agency can give to your own internal marketing efforts is keeping you as competitive as possible with best practices and the latest tools as they become available. One of Good Apple’s core competencies is programmatic advertising, we have had in-house traders as a part of our team for almost a decade. Our proprietary solutions streamline workflows and allow us to negotiate the best rates, giving you maximum efficiency across campaigns.
An experienced programmatic advertising agency sifts through the noise and positions your resources optimally, factoring in industry, vertical and customized client-specific considerations. Retail companies need an advertising agency that keeps up-to-date with modern media targeting technologies, machine learning and AI tools, and constantly develops fresh approaches based on the latest insights.
We recognize that you are best served by marketing strategies that are customized to your business, flexible based on ongoing insights, and agile. Our solutions enable the very types of unique targeting capabilities that help you make the most effective use out of your marketing dollars.
What Are Common Features of Programmatic Buying?
The promise of programmatic technology that transformed how we buy digital media today is that it can be both highly targeted and optimizable at the same time. In this way, it brings precision, speed and flexibility to multi-channel advertising campaigns so that you can learn quickly and keep evolving.
Programmatic buying had its origins in real-time bidding (RTB), which is an auction that occurs on an online ad exchange in real-time. As visitors come to an app or website, agencies and advertisers set up bidding rules so that they only purchase the impressions that align most closely with their targeting, campaign goals and budget.
Today, programmatic is constantly evolving beyond its RTB origins – there is more intelligent machine learning technology, the auction dynamics have shifted and expanded, the mechanics of targeting in a privacy-safe way are changing, and an increasing number of channels can be purchased programmatically, from TV to billboards.
While there are nearly endless possibilities when it comes to selecting a programmatic buying partner, choosing one that can help you navigate the complex landscape, terminology and evolving frontiers is important.
Additionally, the precise details of programmatic buying vary by company and campaign, and there is some programmatic vocabulary and features that are common across the board. These terms represent the most common programmatic bidding options and platforms available. Familiarity with them can help you have even more productive conversations with your internal teams as well as with your agency partners, and may help you find ways to implement existing proprietary data to sharpen your programmatic target customer profiles.
Choosing a programmatic buying partner is not only complex because of the service layer, but also because of the underpinning technology layers.
- A demand-side platform (DSP), for example, is a platform where advertisers—who are generally brands and their agencies—can shop across several different ad exchanges simultaneously. The greatest range of options is offered up to the buyers, or “demand.”
- A supply-side platform (SSP) is the opposite of a DSP in that it offers advertising inventory sellers, or “publishers”, the option to post their inventory across several different ad exchanges simultaneously. Here, the range of options is offered up to the sellers, who are the keepers of the ad supply.
Auction types have greatly expanded to include more pricing and placement flexibility.
- Programmatic direct is one option, where the ad transaction happens directly between the publisher (selling the ad) and the advertiser (buying the ad). This is a direct deal between the buyer and seller that does not require bidding. Instead, the seller can actually invite specific buyers to bid on available ad space.
- Private exchange buying is much like programmatic direct, but these sales happen within a controlled marketplace and not on a one-on-one basis. However, this form of sales still gives advertisers control over purchasing the type of ad inventory that best suits their brand.
- Open exchange buying allows all buyers the equal opportunity to purchase the same inventory.
Mention of DSPs and SSPs frequently comes with notes on DMPs. A data management platform (DMP) is a slightly different feature of programmatic advertising, where data insights regarding audiences are stored and analyzed. This data can be gathered from across a broad range of channels through multiple third parties. Segmentation can be designed around these insights.
That said, the industry is rapidly shifting from DMPs to CDPs, or customer data platforms, which integrate not just third-party data (like DMPs do) but even 1st party data. CDPs, therefore, provide higher quality data within a more comprehensive landscape. CDPs are more relevant than ever and will continue to be a functional solution even as Google is phasing out the use of 3rd party cookies by 2022.
Using direct, 1st party insights, programmatic advertising can create the most relevant, best-targeted advertising experiences for your customers. Good Apple keeps abreast of the latest industry practices in gathering 1st and 2nd party data insights, and so we can develop tailored solutions to give you the most valuable view of your target customers.
Programmatic targeting benefits directly from this data. That’s because the targeting used in programmatic advertising ensures that the ads are only delivered to specifically intended audiences. This sort of deliberate advertising intrinsically maximizes the efficacy of ad spend. One way that a programmatic advertising agency like Good Apple sets itself apart is in its ability to pinpoint the precise audiences that would move the needle for your brand, and then trace the appropriate behavioral parameters in order to effectively segment them out.
We also place a focus on education. We may be the media experts, but we are your partners in our work together. The only way this partnership can be effective is if we are aligned on goals and methods, which does require transparency in plans of action as well as interpreting real-time results. The relationships we build with each of our clients are one of the core reasons why Good Apple remains their marketing vendor of choice.
Why Good Apple Is The Right Programmatic Advertising Agency For You
Now that we have delved a bit into the importance and key features of programmatic advertising—including the importance of both technical prowess as well as data mastery—let’s dig into the specifics of why Good Apple is the best choice of a programmatic advertising agency for you.
Our entire agency—not just our in-house programmatic advertising department—is data-driven. We continuously refine, optimize and effectively measure every campaign that we work on based on hard data gathered in real time, with the intention of pinpointing opportunities for long-term market growth. Every member of our team leverages an approach that blends real-time data with in-depth customer insights, although for our programmatic advertising efforts this includes AI-powered bidding as well. By keeping a close watch on campaign performance data, we develop actionable insights that can inform future decisions.
We can help lift your revenue using programmatic advertising and the capabilities stemming from our advanced experience. You have some of the data, but we can help fill in the gaps as well as finesse your customer profiles based on available data management platforms. From there, we can help design the types of campaigns that land your brand in front of consumers right before they make their purchase—and in time to choose your company’s products and services.
While other agencies may leverage a “spray and pray” approach to ensure that there are positive results, we consider deliberate spending to be an essential part of success. We have to help our clients get the maximum return on their investment, or else we have not done our job well as digital marketing experts.
Good Apple has worked with numerous successful brands of various sizes and industries. Our approach has been tested and it works. We also constantly finetune our approach based on the numerous successes we’ve had over time.
Our client campaign efficiencies average +30% KPI efficiency within the first year alone. Compared to competing agencies, Good Apple regularly leads paid Facebook campaigns that drive 29% more conversions and boast a 90% more efficient CPA. Work with us, and we’ll help you maximize your ad spend to land the best possible ROI.
