Programmatic advertising is an efficient, data-driven way of buying highly relevant audiences at scale. It is the most efficient way to buy digital ads and get your ad live in the current advertising landscape.
While ideal for upper- and mid-funnel prospecting, programmatic advertising is also a useful conversion strategy to support other lower-funnel channels like paid search or social media remarketing.
Want a refresher on what programmatic advertising is? See our Programmatic Advertising 101 blog post.
Programmatic can help you reach customers along their entire path to purchase and drive more valuable conversions. It’s no wonder that marketers are putting more than 50% of their media budget into programmatic advertising. But what exactly are the benefits of programmatic advertising over non-automated ad buying solutions?
1. Timesaver
Programmatic advertising automates the buying and selling of ad inventory, putting in brands’ hands the ability to purchase inventory in real-time. In other words, once a brand wins the bid for an ad placement, the ad can be served within milliseconds.
Programmatic’s advanced targeting capabilities make it the quickest way to get your digital ad out into the world.
Unlike programmatic, manual or direct advertising requires advertisers to spend a lot of time working with publishers while dealing with a limited amount of inventory available per month. Brands have to go directly to individual publishers, send an IO to each one, and manage each separately, which is not only time-consuming but also costly.
Programmatic advertising takes less time because brands only have to go to one programmatic partner and send one IO to be seen across a variety of sites that align with the target audience.
2. Provides Limitless Inventory
With manual advertising, advertisers don’t only have to spend more time going directly to publishers but also have to work around a limited amount of inventory available per month.
With traditionally ad buying methods, inventory is finite because each publisher can only serve ads within their own site, meaning there is a limited amount of inventory available per month.
Programmatic provides limitless inventory because advertisers have access to nearly every premium website. Brands are able to purchase inventory in real-time across the internet and serve highly targeted ads within milliseconds.
3. Prevents Wasted Ad Spend
With its data-driven approach, Programmatic takes less time to implement, is more scalable, and drives better targeting than manual advertising methods. It helps ensure that your ad dollars are only spent on relevant audiences who are highly likely to be interested in your brand.
This reduces wasted ad spend because audience data will be heavily used to only serve your ads to your target audience.
On the other hand, wasted ad spend is often higher with non-programmatic advertising methods because it’s impossible that everyone visiting the site an ad appears on falls into a brand’s target audience, meaning brands are more likely to use ad dollars to get impressions that won’t convert.
4. Optimizes Campaign Frequency
Manual advertising can be a trap for wasted ad spend not only because of drastically reduced capabilities to target granularly but also because of its lack of campaign-level frequency.
The inability to cap campaign frequency means that it’s possible for a brand’s ad to be seen too many times, which can lead to oversaturation and cause the user to become disinterested in or even annoyed with a brand.
Conversely, programmatic advertising allows brands to limit the amount of times an ad is seen by a user, striking the perfect balance of the consumer seeing and being compelled by an ad without feeling overwhelmed. Brands can ensure an ad is seen the optimal number of times across the entire campaign, wherever the ad is showing.
Conclusion
With its data-driven approach to audience targeting, Programmatic is the most efficient way to buy ads. Compared to manual or direct ad buying methods, it saves time, prevents wasted ad spend, provides limitless inventory, and optimizes campaign frequency. Programmatic can play a huge role in ensuring that your budget goes towards converting relevant customers who are highly likely to purchase.
Are you interested in seeing how Programmatic could be a boon for your business? Send us a message and one of our Programmatic experts will reach out to share answers, insights, and opportunities to put your brand on the path to profitable growth.
