Programmatic Advertising, Explained

For decades, and even today, businesses rely on traditional advertising methods — print, television, radio, mail, etc. — to disseminate their messages. While these methods can reach a large audience, they can be expensive and imprecise. Programmatic advertising has emerged as a cost-effective alternative that allows advertisers to easily target specific demographics and reach only the viewers who are most likely to become customers. So what is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling ad inventory. This is done by connecting advertisers to publishers through exchanges. This involves real-time bidding across various platforms such as video, social media and mobile. Through real-time bidding, the system can detect which advertiser has the highest bid for selected criteria.

Programmatic has become a popular trend in advertising, primarily due to the technologies that contribute to its effectiveness. Through algorithms, companies can measure visitor tendencies. They can then gather this information to target audiences who are more likely to buy into their products and services. This system can also save companies time as they will be able to push their services to the right customers. This is accomplished through a comprehensive process.

The programmatic advertising process includes the use of DMPs (demand management platforms) and DSPs (demand side platforms). DMPs collect cookie data which allow marketers to see whom their audience may be, websites visited, previously-read content and user’s location. DSPs, on the other hand, allow agencies to purchase media placement.  Another useful tool of programmatic advertising, an SSP (supply side platform), determines how long a visitor was on a site and visitor tendencies.

With all of the positives that come from programmatic advertising, there are some drawbacks. One is fraud, which occurs often. Ad fraud can take place in a few different ways, like human traffic, non-human traffic, and invisible ads. Non-human ads take place through bots, which generate fake pages. Human traffic takes place through the posting of invisible ads, which have no way of being seen by a visitor. Being aware of ad fraud can alleviate potential pitfalls with programmatic advertising.

Want to know how programmatic advertising can benefit your business? Learn more, and contact MyMobileLyfe today.