As part of our mission to educate small business owners and marketing departments looking to expand into media, Screechy Cat Media will be creating a series of short posts outlining some of the important facets of digital media. In this post, we focus on programmatic media buying.
Programmatic Media Buying
What
Programmatic Media Buying is a mostly automated process of purchasing digital media using an algorithm or AI and real-time bidding. Media buyers choose the audience, creative, geotargeting parameters, and a bid price, and machine-learning takes over from there. Bidding on inventory happens in milliseconds, with the winning advertiser typically paying $0.01 more than the next highest bid.
Think of it kind of like eBay: instead of products, media buyers are bidding on impressions to serve against their selected audience. Dozens of advertisers may be bidding on the same impression, with the winning bid often paying a penny more than the next highest bidder.
This is similar to how search and social inventory is often sold: media buyers will select an audience (or keywords in the case of paid search), and tell the algorithm the max price (or a range) they are willing to pay to win the impression. While this may seem commonplace in digital advertising, display inventory historically was sold on a guaranteed basis, with advertisers paying set CPM rates for a specified number of impressions across a website or network of sites.
Where
Programmatic Media Buying often occurs on a platform known in the space as a DSP, or a demand-side platform. Popular DSPs include The Trade Desk, StackAdapt (which we use here at Screechy Cat Media), Basis, Amobee, and Google’s DV360.
DSPs access inventory on what are known as ad exchanges. These ad exchanges cover upwards of 98% of the content online, including popular news, sports, entertainment, business, and personal websites. DSPs often have the capability of purchasing display (banner), video, ConnectedTV, digital out-of-home, and mobile advertising, all from one centralized platform.
Worth mentioning, although the Google Ads platform allows customers to buy display and video inventory, it is not considered by most to be a DSP, as it only provides access to Google’s own ad exchange.
Who
Programmatic Media Buying is available to virtually everyone, but there are some restrictions to note. Many of the popular DSP platforms will not work with advertisers directly, opting instead to work through digital advertising agencies or reseller companies. Often this is done to limit the volume of customer support requests the DSP is managing directly. Large-scale advertisers such as Walmart and Target may have their own “seats” on the ad exchanges, enabling them to utilize their own technology for programmatic media buying.
When
Programmatic can be incorporated throughout the customer journey, from building awareness (with tactics such as DOOH and ConnectedTV) to driving online or in-store conversions (through display remarketing, for example). There are usually no minimum campaign budgets, but DSPs will often have contractual minimum monthly spend requirements.
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Several DSPs, including AdRoll and SmartyAds, offer self-serve access with a simple sign-up. However, programmatic media buying can be complicated, as there are options for audience, geography, network, placement, and creative optimizations. Working with a digital advertising agency, such as Screechy Cat Media, can get you started with programmatic for your brand awareness or direct response campaign. Contact us to upgrade to programmatic media buying today!
