The process around online advertising has changed a lot over the last decade. Gone are the days of IOs and tedious back-and-forth that came with old school ad buying and programmatic advertising has now become the most dominant form of display advertising. Ad placement is guided by artificial intelligence, real-time bidding, and automated decision-making when purchasing ad space online. Someone can use these to target a specific audience, and leveraging their knowledge of programmatic advertising can be helpful when it comes to managing an online marketing strategy. In 2016, eMarketer had projected digital display ad spending to exceed $22 billion, up from $10 billion in 2014, just showing how important it has become. Here are some tips to get you started to best utilize your data, and find the best strategies to reach your target audience.
Create a Goal
Advertisers are relying on real-time bidding more than ever before. It’s no longer a matter of interacting with a marketing team, or negotiating between advertisers and sales people. Once you have a goal, you will be able to find the best programmatic approach. The real-time aspects of programmatic advertising make it flexible, so you can make adjustments if performance isn’t up to par. If so, then you can set goals based on the purpose of the campaign.
For example, a direct response campaign will be run differently than one for branding. In regards to programmatic, retargeting your audience is the best option if you’re running a direct response campaign. With branding, look for domains known for high viewability and that have high impact ad units. And, make sure you a measuring viewability correctly in terms of images, inbound/outbound links, meta data, etc.
Know Who to Reach and How to Reach Them
For any advertising strategy to work, you need to know who your target audience is. A wide range of demographic parameters can be used. For example, geo-targeting, allowing advertisers looking to enhance localized search and enables businesses to target specific customers in specific cities or regions, right down to their zip code. Programmatic campaigns allow you to focus on more than assumptions; a retail marketer selling sports apparel, for example, may use programmatic advertising and find females are the top performing group rather than males. The retailer can then shift their marketing efforts to improve their bottom line.
In addition, you can analyze Web traffic to identify the most active times of the day. In regards to advertising, that means higher bids and more competition when traffic is highest. You can also identify how recently someone last visited a website. The more recent a prospective customer’s visit, the more likely it is to recapture their interest. Identifying the groups most likely to respond can boost your programmatic advertising campaign.
Identify Your Data Layers
Audience segmentation is more effective when you have layers of data to use. It doesn’t only identify who to target, but who doesn’t fit a customer profile for your product or service. If, for example, you’re selling maternity clothes, the first step would be to identify women who are pregnant, out of a larger audience base. Demographic data, mobile apps, and other tools could be used for this purpose. A second data layer would include pregnant women who have recently purchased or searched for maternity clothes, while a third data layer would encompass users who have clicked on product pages on a maternity clothing brand’s website. Your ROI will improve by not targeting users who don’t apply to your campaign.
Finding The Best Performing Channels
The most affordable, flexible means for programmatic advertising tend to be on desktop displays, but, the tend is now shifting towards mobile display ads. You should make an effort to have your advertising spread across all types of displays when possible. Especially when trying to reach an audience throughout the purchase cycle, this will allow you to maximize conversions and sales.Running a successful campaign means working with the top tools, including AdWords, Facebook Lead Ads, and others. The idea is to get as much information as you can about potential customers. With Facebook’s tool, you can get names, email addresses, and even create customized questions.
Keep Your Content Current
Your message needs to be refreshed once in a while. The audience will realize it if you don’t stick to a content calendar. A repetitive message will become stale and people will feel it. Also, various social media sites, including Facebook, have algorithms that reduce impressions if the content or message isn’t updated. To stay on top of this, you can track ad performance, adding new creative if things go south over a 30-day cycle. The great thing about programmatic advertising is it lets you recalibrate the effort in real-time; you can also put more funds into high-performing ads or even replace the creative content of a low-performing ad.
Programmatic advertising allows you to stay in touch with the target audience at every stage of the acquisition cycle. It involves using real-time information to create flexible online advertising campaigns. If you haven’t yet taken this approach, start looking into programmatic buying, the tips mentioned above, and building an online advertising program, so you can have better performing ads, links, and websites.
