5 Reasons Why Digital Marketers Should Adopt Programmatic Advertising Now
Programmatic advertising is a fast-growing technology that helps put control of media spend back into the hands of the marketer. It is being driven by growing demand for transparency, the need to counter rising ad fraud, the benefits of automation, and ability to measure return on ad spend accurately. For the uninitiated, programmatic advertising is the automated buying of media or ad inventory on digital channels such as social, over the top (OTT), video, display, mobile apps, and even TV and audio. Findings from the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) report for 2018 found programmatic will make up a quarter of all digital media buying by 2020 – just a shade less than Rs 5000 crores.
Below are the top five reasons why early adopters are making programmatic ad buying a significant part of their media mix.
1. Buy more ad impressions, pay less intermediary fees
A typical ad buy involves multiple intermediaries – such as agencies, DSP, Ad exchanges, SSP, and publishers. Studies show that 60% of the digital advertising budgets goes towards intermediary fees and only the remainder is actually deployed in buying media. A brand with a digital budget of Rs 100 crores may have only spend Rs 60 crores buying impressions, with the rest consumed by intermediary fees. Programmatic ad platforms help by providing a complete transparency to the cost chain and lets you unlock at least 20% of the wasted budget. This is made possible by providing visibility to the exact fees associated with every single intermediary in the supply chain thereby enabling smart advertisers to plan the most optimal path to delivering the impressions to the audience. This money is now available to buy more ad inventory or reduce your overall CPM or CPCV.
2. AD fraud reduction
A significant proportion of your display advertising budget is lost to invalid traffic that includes bots and other fraudulent means deployed to divert your hard-won budgets. As per recent research, 9% of display ads and 22% of video spending were wasted on bots. This is estimated to be much higher in India. A good programmatic platform provides marketers with complete control of the publishers they want to use to target audiences. In addition, with built-in capabilities to block bots and fake pre-rolls and other type of fraud, programmatic platforms help reduce wastage. Moreover, platforms like Adobe have a non-human traffic credit program that compensates in cases where fraud manages to slip through.
3. Ads delivered in a brand safe environment
Brand safety is emerging as a top concern for brand managers. 99% of advertisers are worried about the content alongside which their brand ads are being displayed and 45% of them feel that media partners are doing a poor job of ensuring a brand safe environment. Marketers, as brand custodians, must be wary of their advertisements showing up alongside objectionable or offensive material such as racist, pirated, hate or adult content. A programmatic platform can minimize the possibility of your ads being run in an unsafe environment. These platforms have specialized media quality teams that screen inventory and remove any unsafe ones.
4. Ads become contextual, relevant and respectful of consumer privacy
52% of internet users in India employ some of form of ad-blocking tool. The rise in ad-blocking behavior can be attributed to poor hygiene by advertisers – not respecting consumer privacy, allowing pesky ads that block content, using auto-play audio, etc. But the most causative of the ad blocking behavior is irrelevant and non-contextual targeting. For example, consumers are served ads and shown offers for products that they have already bought, hotel rooms ads long after the holiday is completed, airline ticket offers after they have booked, or offers to loyal customers who don’t need the added incentive. This is wasteful advertising. And even worse, consumers think that brands executing this way are clueless or foolish. Programmatic advertising platforms help to avoid disconnected experiences by leveraging consumer and prospect data integrated from various sources and stitched together to drive relevant and contextual communication. Programmatic can use CRM and loyalty data to suppress an ad or advertise the right offer to loyal consumers.
One brand that has personalized it’s programmatic experiences is OCBC, Singapore’s oldest bank. OCBC’s marketing team wanted to optimise paid search and media buys to reach more customers and achieve greater returns on digital marketing. Campaign by campaign, the bank has systematically measured, tested, and refined its approach to reach audiences more efficiently. Discover how OCBC has now seen a 23% boost in video completion rates at half the cost per view, and a 25% increase in conversions witout increasing spend.
5. Rapid advances in ad technology
There are two types of technology changes that are at play in the programmatic space. One type of technology advancement is in the core programmatic tech stack. Machine Learning makes possible capabilities such as predictive spend recommendations, forecasting campaign performance.
The other advancement is happening at the channel level. There are newer forms of digital channels emerging that only programmatic can tap into. Programmatic TV is already one of the fastest growing digital channels in the US and has become an easy one for advertisers to buy TV spots like they would buy ad inventory on an website. Abhay Singhal, Co-Founder & CRO at inMobi, says they’ve already started to classify channels like connected TV and billboards under ‘mobile’ because they are channels that are quickly becoming smarter, more programmatic, and, ultimately, more mobile.
India’s advertising community is increasingly discussing programmatic though it’s extremely nascent. As programmatic audio and “out of home” channels continue to emerge, we may see that interest accelerate.
The future is programmatic
It is forecasted that in 2019 about two-thirds of all digital display ads will be programmatic, reaching around $84.9 billion in total spend. Pioneering marketers have already started seeing the value of programmatic in India. Those that have not considered programmatic buying should seriously consider it as option to helps them buy more media with every dollar of media money, safeguard against ad fraud and enable more data-driven automation.
These are the top five reasons for adopting programmatic, but there are many more. Do you have any others to add? Let me know in the comments.