What is Programmatic Advertising and What Are Its Advantages?

In this article, we are going to talk about a topic that is slowly appearing in the world of online marketing such as Programmatic Advertising or Programmatic Advertising Purchase. We will see what it is and what are its main advantages.

Programmatic Advertising Purchase refers to the use of technology for the management (planning and purchase) of digital advertising and more specifically to the use of software and machines to automate such processes.

Unlike the “traditional” method, which has a fundamental human component, which includes everything from negotiation to the manual insertion of purchase orders, the program activity is designed to provide basically efficiency. How? Well, through the reduction of costs and the lesser waste of the investment made in buying inventory.

The essence of the programmatic advertising purchase is based on the possibility of acquiring specific audiences.

It is no longer a matter of reaching these using twists and turns that brought us closer to our target, through the context, the supposed affinity of support with our audience, etc.

But the possibility of impregnating our accurate data actions makes the segment we want to communicate more accurate and the least possible waste of impacts.

One of the tactics, the most used, and that has virtually cannibalized the notion of programmatic advertising, is the so-called Real-Time Bidding. Both concepts are still confused.

The Real-Time Bidding, or just RTB, is a  model of programmatic advertising based on real-time bidding to acquire printing certain advertising spaces.

The usual thing is that when a user accesses your page for the first time, it does not convert immediately; but leave it without doing any action.

The recruitment tactic would be prospecting. The strategy of “persecution”, once the potential client left the page, would constitute retargeting.

Actually, both actions, recruitment and “recovery, retargeting or remarketing” have been used in digital advertising for a long time, in different channels and with different formulas, before they became the essential tactics of any programmatic advertising action.

In the programmatic advertising field, the concept is the same. The clearest difference with the options offered by “conventional” advertising is that in the programmatic advertising channel both actions can be executed practically simultaneously, they would belong to the same tactic, configuring themselves as a combined process, with two different phases. All the operations would be carried out from the same platform.

The Real-Time Bidding main objective is to obtain large volumes of advertising inventory with reduced costs

Thanks to the application of Big Data in the purchase of programmatic advertising, it is possible to know, with a degree of depth much greater than what we have known to date, to the users, their characteristics, uses and customs of their navigation, their interests, and even the type of purchases and acquisitions that they have made online.

All this information allows us to fine-tune the segmentation criteria to reach the target audience with greater precision. In fact, a “problem” that can lead us to excessive segmentation is the loss of scale.

The experience and the knowledge of a good Trading desk will alleviate this inconvenience and will look for the most efficient balance between the volume and the rigor of the segmentation.

One of the most important segmentation criteria is geolocation, which provides the exact location of the user in real-time, which allows you to offer the service you are looking for, when you are looking for it, using an appropriate message and the most custom possible.

The programmatic advertising purchase is basically channeled through three platforms joined together that complement each other to offer the full service:

• The ad Exchange, the place where supply and demand are put in contact and serves as a meeting point between advertisers and publishers.
• The DSP’s, where advertisers can make bids according to their objectives and interests and monitor the performance of the campaign; and finally,
• The SSP’s, where the owners of advertising spaces offer the supports where they can include an advertisement.

Online advertising campaigns are by definition measurable and modifiable.

When these actions are carried out through the programmatic advertising channel, they can be modified in real-time. Knowing which lines, which ads and which media are giving better results, and which are performing below average, we can react and make the necessary changes.

In this way, from the beginning of the action, we can exercise greater control over the advertising.

All the information collected can be analyzed. From there, advertisers can draw conclusions and adjust all the parameters of the action, while the campaign continues to be issued, thus improving its effectiveness.

A great advantage of programmatic advertising is that you can define with great precision all those necessary aspects to communicate better with our target audience, with the most appropriate message and at the most appropriate time.

In addition to specifying the target; we can select, adjust and modify multiple variables that will influence the achievement of the objectives.

Programmatic advertising campaigns provide companies with a large amount of first-hand data or “First Party Data”.

These data are very valuable to advertisers; since they can use them to study what successes and mistakes they have made, and make the necessary adjustments for future campaigns correcting failures and optimizing actions.