Cracking the trifecta of programmatic advertising

We live in a fast-paced, lean-forward society. Consumers are time-poor and attention is at a premium. So how can agencies, brand advertisers or freelance marketers achieve the holy trinity of digital advertising - reaching the right audience, at the right time, with the right message?

Consumers make decisions in a split-second. The ad they see must resonate - and resonate quickly. The industry benchmark for real-time bidding decisions to be made is currently 120 milliseconds, or 0.12 seconds - a unit of time too small for human brains to quantify. Yet, in this tiny space of time, the Demand Side Platform (DSP) responsible for placing the bid must decide whether that particular user is suitable for that particular ad and adapt their bidding strategy accordingly.

So, as a marketer, how do you assess which tool is best to achieve these goals?

Many agencies we speak to believe they should simply put everything into DV360, perceiving it to be the mainstream platform of programmatic advertising. However, DV360 - in common with other DSPs - comes with a number of problems. For a start, there is a minimum spend threshold. Ostensibly, this is to ensure the platform has enough budget to facilitate the learning algorithm for manual optimisations. But in reality, this simply alienates brands with low budgets and ensures those with deeper pockets spend every penny of their monthly allowance regardless of ad redundancy, wastage and cost inefficiencies.

But what if there was another way for marketers to solve the age-old programmatic trifecta of time, user and content, all with minimal wastage and cost-effective bidding strategies, in a way legacy DSPs can't, or won't?

There is - through smart bid technology.

Smart bid technology within a DSP means the platform only bids for impressions that deliver quantifiable results. It combines customer journey data and machine learning to predict behaviours and for automatic optimisation. It then calculates the optimal value of placements in real-time bidding (RTB) marketplaces to optimise creative dynamically. This process occurs in less than 100 milliseconds in a cookie-compliant environment.

For most brands or agencies, even the larger ones, there simply isn't the time or the resources available to build out their own in-house solution - it takes months of dedicated (not to mention expensive) engineering expertise to build and test the architecture, before the platform can even be used.

Instead, there are usually two routes marketers can take: they can either use a white-label software platform to create their own branded version of the product for use with in-house campaigns as well as multi-client campaigns - or they can opt for a full campaign management service on top of the platform.

As per our mantra here at Preciso: "Let the tech work hard for you, not the other way around".

Whether going for the self-serve or white-label option, the key is choosing a platform that has smart bid technology integrated as standard. For brands in the ecommerce sector, it also needs to have API connectors readily available for swift integrations with key ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce.

The main aim of a smart-bid platform should be to reduce wastage, increase relevancy and improve cost efficiencies for brand advertisers.

Predictive capabilities will also provide intelligence to the client on what to improve. After all, a high volume of impressions doesn't always equal a high conversion rate. But with intuitive bidding technology, we can start to answer key questions: is it the creative itself that isn’t resonating, and why? Why are cart abandonments so high? Are landing pages optimised for SEO? Are product recommendations being made based on consumer behaviour? Can the UX be improved?

While the smart bid platform will provide access to the right user at the right time, creative teams can then work with the DSP to optimise all of these things and make sure the user experience is as optimised as it can be.

The truth is, with traditional DSPs like DV360, we're seeing so many SMEs being denied access to programmatic opportunities through a prohibitive minimum spend threshold. They can't gain access to a managed or even a self service platform, and as mentioned above, building anything in-house is just not viable. Recognising the need to cater to everyone across the advertising spectrum, platforms are finally starting to emerge that allow access to the best placements without the unattainable (or wasteful) price tag.

In summary, platforms with universal and impartial appeal will be the biggest hit with agencies, brands and freelance marketers in 2024 - providing access to the three campaign metrics that matter - as well as tailored support to get the best out of their programmatic campaign investments.

Also published in: Marketing Donut