This is a buzzword in the marketing world and everyone is wondering, what is programmatic advertising? Everyone has been talking about it, what does it mean? Coles notes version: it is the automated process of buying ads online. Why is this good? It allows companies to move away from broad website-based campaigns to a more strategically segmented campaign, reaching customers who are more likely to show interest in the brand.
This hyper-targeting allows the marketing team to reach the right audience at the right time, resulting in higher quality leads and conversions. Ok great… how is this done?

There is this thing called real-time bidding (RTB), basically, advertisers pay for the consumers they want to reach rather than hoping that they reach them…. for example, say Beyonce releases a new album and you are a music streaming app that is streaming her new album.. you will want to capitalize on this.
You can increase your bids to beat the competition and adjust your ad copy to focus on her new album. With programmatic ads, you can increase the rotation of your relevant ads, adjust your bids to blast and handpick the websites you want to run your ads in…. increasing more awareness of your music app, leading to more sales.
How to get started – find a programmatic partner and determine:
- The goal of your campaign (make sure it correlates with your business goals)
- What is the budget? (many programmatic partners have a minimum budget, make sure you meet these requirements)
- Campaign dates (this gives your programmatic partner an idea of how much you are willing to pay across a certain amount of time)
- The CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) that you are willing to shell out (Have a CPM in mind when you negotiate)
- Your audience (make sure you have nailed down your audience ex. women in Los Angeles who make $100,000+ a year and drive a Lexus AND that your partner has the targeting capabilities and segments to reach your target audiences)
- The target location (make sure you have a specific idea of how segmented you want your geographical location to be)
THEN…Ask questions:
- How do you source your inventory?
- What are your targeting capabilities?
- Do you do retargeting?
- Where do you see the best results from?
- Do you offer fraud protection?
- What is mobile targeting capability?
- Is your platform self-service or do you offer support?
- Do you utilize 3rd party data or is your audience based on your own 1st party data? (this will help you determine how big their data segments maybe)
Want more or have recommendations of vendors? Please weigh in