The programmatic advertising either programmatic advertising is the automatic purchase of advertising space in digital media. The process is simplified. To understand what it is and how it works, I talked to Gorka Anitua, who worked as an expert in ad networks and trading desk (specialized team in media buying through programmatic) in agencies in Spain and Mexico. In addition, Gorka has extensive experience in transformation and digital marketing. He has helped brands and companies adapt to new models in the advertising industry, programmatic media buying, data collection and management. Similarly, he advises on digital talent needs.
─ What is programmatic advertising?
─ Programmatic advertising is the use of technology to automate media buying. In the past it was done by sending a fax, with purchase orders, which were contracts where they specified which banners of each website they wanted to acquire. Programmatic came to automate that process. It does so through technological platforms, which allow publishers (media or websites) put your Inventory (advertising spaces of different formats) to availability and to advertisers place campaigns.
In programmatic, several technologies are mixed, based on that, two platforms are created:
- DSP. Demand Side Platformon the advertiser side
- SSP. Supply Side Platformon the publisher’s side.
Then the inventory and campaigns for a single market called exchange. Thus, programmatic automates the once rudimentary and manual media buying process. In the evolution of this technology, levels of sophistication are being introduced, where the subject of big data and other issues enter.
— What marketing objectives can programmatic advertising achieve?
— In general, programmatic advertising can pursue all marketing objectives (awareness, branding, leads, loyalty). What the advertiser must evaluate is whether programmatic makes sense in his strategy and what level of investment should he allocate based on the results he is seeing?
Undoubtedly, programmatic advertising can be effective for all strategies.
When evaluating which media is more effective or which channel is giving a better result, the rules with which we measure come into play. In other words, the attribution models, that is, what weight will be assigned to each channel that impacts the user.
For example, a person sees a banner on The Economist which may be a product of programmatic, read a blog post on another site but related to the first banner. At the end, search Google for the product or service that was mentioned in the banner and on the blog, click and buy the product. Depending on the attribution model, you can assign a specific weight to each of the impacts involved in the customer journey, for which the purchase was made.
─ What is the relationship between programmatic advertising and cookies?
─ All advertising strategies have a high dependence on cookies, including programmatic. It is involved by part of the anonymous data of users. For its management, platforms called DMP (Data Management Platform) which are mainly based on cookies.
Therefore, programmatic is dependent on cookies to be able to use a specific segmentation, based on user information. However, through programmatic advertising you can run campaigns without using cookies. For example, a contextual segmentation can be carried out where the banners are published on a website, without knowing who the reader behind it is, but knowing what the theme of the site is.
— What are the most important concepts involved in programmatic advertising?
- DSP. Demand Side Platform: Advertiser campaigns are uploaded here.
- SSP. Supply Side Platform: it is the part of the same platform used by the media (publishers)
- ad exchange: meeting place for both where the transaction is made (marketplace for advertisers).
- DMP. Data Management Platform: They are used when you want to run a campaign, having a more specific segmentation based on user navigation information. Although due to the change in cookies, now we are beginning to talk about CDP (Customer Data Platforms). This is where advertisers can store data that they collect directly from audiences, called first party data, and use it to buy through the platforms.
— From what monthly budget is it possible to use programmatic?
─ The main DSPs on the market require a minimum investment, which not all advertisers can afford to grant a license, also known as a “seat”. However, there are other platforms that facilitate access to programmatic without minimum investment amounts, such as Choozle or Pontiac Media.
— What is the difference between programmatic advertising and Google display?
─ There are media (publishers) that are not within the Google advertiser network, called AdSense, and are within the programmatic platforms or vice versa. Another difference is that on sites with a lot of people traffic, the inventory that has the most visibility (ad slots on each page) is usually marketed through programmatic and not Google Display or even directly without paying a commission to a platform. . In addition, the segmentation and data capacity of programmatic tools (for example Google’s DV 360) is greater than that of Google Display.
Finally, diversifying the advertising media and measuring the results in each one will always be a good strategy.