What’s Programmatic Shopping for for PPC?
Advances in the advertising industry have resulted in data-driven methods to promote and market your business.
A relevant example is programmatic advertising.
A study found that programmatic ad spend will exceed $ 59.45 billion in 2019. By 2021, $ 81 billion in ad spend on digital displays will be programmatically.
How Can Programmatic Buying Benefit Your Business? What does that mean anyway? This guide will tell you everything you need to know about this latest marketing trend and how you can use it for your business.
What is programmatic buying?
Before, buying ads was a long and tedious process.
Advertisers had to buy impressions from publishers, negotiate terms on ad inventory, and send RFQs to get their ads out there.
This meant a lot of back and forth and follow-up across multiple parties. It was expensive and, worse, inefficient for the most part.
The rise of programmatic advertising has accelerated the process. Advertisers can now leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to automate the real-time ad buying process.
This graphic from PubMatic shows the difference between the different types of ad buying:
How does programmatic buying work? Here is an example to help you understand the process.
For example, suppose you sell technical products like an iPhone.
You choose a PPC campaign to promote your products on Google. Your goal is to bid on ad inventory to showcase your ad content on Facebook, Google, or in a 30-second pre-roll video on YouTube.
During the programmatic buying process, cookies or anonymous data are sent to a demand-side platform where the ad purchase is made. Data can be used to identify users who have visited your website, live in your geographic location or are already customers.
You can use this data to identify people who are similar to your ideal target audience. In this case, it could be users who read an article about the latest iPhone, visited Apple's website, or searched for iPhone reviews.
How to show your ads to high converting users with these attributes
Real-time bids are placed between different advertisers who want to send the user an ad impression. This entire process is automated and based more on algorithms than human input – and takes less than a few seconds.
The winner of the bid can show their advertisement to the user of the website.
We hope website users will click and convert the ad!
In summary, by buying programmatically, advertisers can identify their target market based on behavioral information rather than just keywords, bid on those users, and serve the ad in a snap.
Advanced ad targeting capabilities mean accessing high-conversion customers who are more interested in the products or services you are offering.
Why you should use programmatic buying in your PPC campaigns
With programmatic buying, your ads will reach your ideal audience at affordable prices.
Here are some statistics on programmatic buying results:
- Programmatic advertising raised a staggering $ 129.1 billion in 2020 and is projected to hit $ 155 billion in 2021.
- The data-driven nature of programmatic advertising has led buy-side decision makers to choose this option. Almost half (48 percent) believe data is the driving force behind their programmatic investments and strategies.
- Fifty-two percent of publishers say they sold more than 81 percent of their ad inventory.
- Video is a leading driver in programmatic advertising. 54 percent of agencies bought more than 41 percent of their video inventory through programmatic advertising, compared to just 50 percent in 2019.
- 68 percent of marketers said paid ads are "very important" to their marketing strategy.
These statistics show that programmatic advertising can bring a lot of benefits! Here are a few more benefits of using this ad buying strategy.
Increase range
Programmatic buying is supported on numerous advertising networks and marketing channels. With that click, marketers can access private marketplaces or pull up advertising space from thousands of websites.
Because the entire process is automated, advertisers can scale their PPC campaigns with minimal effort while staying within budget.
more transparency
Publishers and advertisers can get real-time information on ad placement and activity. More transparency guarantees that every cent is well invested and at the same time the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is improved.
Aim beyond the click rate
A PPC campaign can generate thousands of impressions and clicks. However, these numbers don't matter if you're not generating conversions and increasing sales.
With programmatic advertising, marketers can use advanced ad targeting capabilities. By using website behavior or demographic data, advertisers can reach their target audience on a large scale.
Access to data and results
Programmatic exchange provides real-time information on your ad performance. Once you get the insights, you can maximize results by investing in high performing ads.
If your ads are below average, consider modifying them based on data from previous campaigns. As long as you know what works and what doesn't, you can optimize your campaigns and scale them up quickly.
When should I use programmatic buying in PPC campaigns?
Programmatic advertising looks promising, but may not work for everyone. In this section, I'll discuss when programmatic buying is a good fit.
Using Programmatic Buying in PPC Campaigns
- Go beyond the Google Display Network
If you're a PPC marketer, you've likely used the Google Display Ad Network (GDN) to reach website users. Programmatic buying can help you get the most of it.
With programmatic purchase, advertisers can connect to 80+ additional inventory sources and receive placements on websites that were previously inaccessible.
In addition, you can achieve premium inventory levels that were previously considered too small to warrant placement in the GDB, or that are too expensive to purchase directly. An example would be ad placements on popular websites such as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg or Entrepreneur.
- Access to first party data
Marketing strategies are often based on big data to be effective.
With modern analysis tools we can easily monitor the results and collect information about our customer base.
Demand-side platforms (where ads are purchased) can incorporate first-party data. This includes data from your customers or your target audience.
First party data can include CRM, social, behavioral, and subscription data.
This enables advertisers to launch highly personalized and targeted campaigns. Similar to Facebook campaigns, they can create similar audiences that match the profiles of their existing audience.
Research-backed data can also help you create content that is more likely to resonate with your audience. You can also create effective campaigns to attract new prospects to the sales funnel.
- Personalize ads
People are bombarded with advertisements on their phones in their email 24/7 while they watch TV.
Programmatic buying enables advertisers to create ads using behavioral targeting and demographics. So you can connect with your target group without being spammy or annoying.
For example, the Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), which includes hotel chains like Holiday Inn, used programmatic advertising to compete with Booking.com and Expedia.
According to their data, consumers chose their competitor websites because they had the myth of offering better prices. In reality, customers were charged between 15 and 30 percent more than the original price.
The campaign went well because the target users knew better the cost of booking third-party websites.
5 Programmatic Purchase Software Options
At this stage, you are probably wondering how to get started with programmatic buying. Let's take a look at some of the top programmatic purchase software options.
Simpli.fi
With the program-controlled platform of Simpli.fi, users can buy targeted impressions or ad inventory efficiently via real-time advertising exchanges.
What's special about it is that marketers can use unstructured data instead of pre-made target group segments. Users can create highly targeted custom audiences based on CRM data, browsing behavior, search history, and geographic location.
You can also use insights to understand audience behavior and optimize audience in real time. This is beneficial for companies with a huge customer base and tons of data.
For seamless analysis, there are more than 60 ready-made reports that users can use to easily organize data from campaign results. You also have visualization tools to help you understand data better using graphs, charts, heat maps, and tables.
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud provides an independent platform for programmatic buying.
The demand-side platform can plan, optimize and manage your advertising campaigns.
AI pulls audience data so advertisers can launch a paid media strategy that drives brand awareness. Content creators can also optimize content and create meaningful user experiences.
Budget is a major concern when running PPC campaigns. With Adobe, users can use AI to analyze data and optimize performance for cost-effective spend.
AdRoll
AdRoll's programmatic platform uses customer intelligence data to identify and target potential leads. It summarizes consumer buying behavior on your website so you can understand what works and predict audience reception.
With its powerful analytics capabilities, marketers can send relevant messages to prospects, resulting in increased engagement and conversions. You can also run omnichannel marketing campaigns and connect to your audience across multiple devices via email, social media, or the internet.
DoubleClick from Google
DoubleClick is a programmatic ad platform that automates the ad buying process and effectively runs campaigns in real time.
Here are some of the most notable features:
- DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager: Built-in intelligence to get key human trafficking and reporting marketing insights. This allows advertisers to make data-driven decisions and better control their advertising spend.
- Double click on Bid Manager: With this tool, agencies can effectively buy ad media from different ad exchanges in one optimized platform.
- DoubleClick search: Powerful search capabilities provide real-time insights into KPIs and ad performance. The Ad Data Hub uses data from Google Ads or your own CRM system to improve your PPC campaigns. When you dive into the details, you can make smart bidding decisions and serve ads across multiple platforms.
- Double click on Rich Media: Data dashboarding tools optimize information from Google Ads, Analytics or spreadsheets. Their interactive dashboards also generate easy-to-understand reports so you can share the results with teams and executives.
- DoubleClick Studio: Using workflow and production tools, marketing teams and media agencies can create high quality, compelling ads that deliver results.
- Google Analytics: With Google Analytics, users can aggregate data to create tailored lists, identify digital touchpoints, and create shareable reports. As you get more information about your company, you can better understand your target audience.
Rubicon project
Rubicon Project has an automated advertising platform that connects media buyers and publishers from around the world. Top brands are using it to reach over a billion consumers.
The platform centralizes the traditional proposal process and contract negotiation. Easy-to-use, real-time performance analysis tools and features seamlessly consolidate the ad buying process.
In addition, insightful reports from data from the Prebid Impression Funnel provide information on page loading and impressions on websites and mobile apps.
Conclusion
Through programmatic buying, marketers can leverage AI and big data to reach their target audience.
Not only can you identify high intent customers, but you can also serve ads at the right time and place to maximize results. The automated bid process speeds the process so you can access premium ad inventory with minimal effort.
While it has many benefits, it may not suit everyone. We recommend this solution to advertisers who have maximized the Google Display Ad Network (GDN) or who have access to first party data.
If you'd like to try it out for yourself, there are several platforms out there to get you started right away.
How are you going to use programmatic buying to drive your marketing?
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