programmatic advertising explained
Programmatic advertising offers a route to purchase media, but it can be confusing with all the ad tech jargons and unspoken mysteries behind data. What frustrates advertisers even more is not knowing where their budget goes. In simple terms, advertisers use data insights, either their own or sourced from trusted third parties, to narrow down the scope they want to target. These data solutions can be activated in a demand-side-platform, where inventory from media owners is also plugged into.
What are the costs?
The advertising cost sums up multiple layers of spend, including data, media, the tech platform, creative hosting, other fancy features such as independent tracking, and of course, your agency’s commission. It can be challenging for first-time advertisers to get their head around it all, let alone the mysterious cost breakdown through ‘managed service’.
Nevertheless, programmatic as a solution should not be blamed for poorly executed campaigns. Apart from demanding greater transparency on media spend, advertisers should actively review the alignment between business goal and campaign strategy. Understand where the data comes from, the composition of inventory, the logic behind attribution set up and the scope of their targeting capability in the industry.
Programmatic for small business
How programmatic advertising is practiced in the industry can be unfriendly to small businesses. Often are small owners asked to commit to a quarterly minimum spend before they get any helpful consultation to steer them to a good starting point. Although programmatic buying has developed a somewhat reputation for being expensive and technically complex, where big players seem to win it all, small advertisers should still try to fully capture the benefit of marketing efficiency made possible by technology.
At Echolution, we want to help small advertisers reach their customers effectively and grow their account sustainably. We see little value in serving an inflated proposal with goals that are fruitless to your business. Instead, we are here to develop a long-term relationship with you and nothing beats trusted communications and successful results.
Retargeting
Did you know only 2% of website visitors convert during their first visit? By placing a piece of invisible code onto your website, you give yourself an opportunity to speak directly to these audiences who have demonstrated interest in your products. With the right dose of frequency restriction, your customers are much more likely to memorise and engage with the personalised experience you create for them.
Prospecting
Unlike retargeting, prospecting enables you to reach audiences who have not become aware of your business yet. Through lookalike modelling and contextual targeting, ad tech algorithms can build you a list of potential prospects who behave similarly to your existing customer profiles. Prospecting is an effective strategy to boost awareness and to drive leads higher up the funnel. You can start with a broad idea and let the performance determine which audience and inventory works the best for your unique campaign needs.
Creative production
In the era of data-driven-marketing, the last thing you want to do is to go ahead and invest heavily on a series of long form videos, only to find out that the majority of your audiences consume relevant content on mobile. Our creative specialists are the experts for you to consult with, and we always look at creatives and data as a pair, to make sure that we are creating meaningful adverts that can be delivered at scale.
DOOH
Traditional one-to-many billboard advertising is transforming rapidly to offer more data insights and greater accessibility in buying. With many OOH companies now offering their own client-facing portals, inventory sites are visualised and mapped to help brands decide where to place ads. Trading OOH programmatically enables brands to set specific conditions based on external data, and purchase inventory in DSPs with greater flexibility. Here at Echolution, we run campaigns in leading DSPs that are integrated with outdoor media, to help you get a quick start and stay ahead of the competition.
What’s your unique business objective? Prefer to run a pilot to test the waters? Get in touch with us for a chat and see if we can help you achieve your goal.