You know when you search the internet for a particular thing and then an online advertisement pops up shortly afterwards promoting that very same thing – that’s not coincidence – it’s programmatic advertising.
Programmatic advertising is used to ‘push’ promotions in the form of display advertising or videos. The fully-automated process allows a company to deliver messages tailored to different customer types.
It refers to the buying and selling of advertising online. It is driven by real-time data meaning advertisers can precisely target their advertisements to a particular audience.
In other words, instead of negotiating with salespeople about what adverts can be placed where, it is done through software.
It’s a marketplace where content publishers offer space for your advertisements and you, the advertiser, can choose which options suit you best at a particular time.
Platforms to run your programmatic advertising are available through companies including Google, Amazon, Adobe, Facebook but there are many others, so it’s best to do your research as well as seek recommendations from others.
Questions have been raised about the transparency of the system as it is based on algorithms and has been subject to fraud.
An Australian company called Viztrade has been set up in 2019 to bring advertisers and publishers together under a fixed pricing model, with a focus on SMEs and regional areas.
If you aren’t confident to go it alone through a programmatic advertising platform you should consider hiring a media company to do it for you.
A report by Australia’s Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) shows that of the companies buying programmatic advertising, 65 per cent now have the capability to do it in-house, so hiring your own marketer skilled in this area is also an option worth considering.
If forecasts by global agency Zenith Media are accurate, then there will be no slowing down for the sale of programmatic advertising, with the spend predicted to hit $2.92 billion in Australia by 2020 – a 67 per cent growth from 2018.
While the majority of adverts are digital display, more formats are becoming available including for mobile, video, music, podcast, radio and television.
Video advertising is worth paying particular attention to, with an IAB report released in September 2019 revealing that video, with 48 per cent, represented the biggest share of general display expenditure for the June 2019 quarter.
Content publishers – the place where you can display your advertising – are also embracing programmatically advertising – 47 per cent are selling their video inventory programmatically, with 53 per cent of this connected TV inventory (i.e. TV via the internet or CTV).
