The latest Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising survey reported the percentage of advertisers investing more than 41% of their display inventory via programmatic methods increased to 70% in 2020 from 55% in 2019.
Data-informed programmatic ad targeting optimizes ad campaigns and ensures brands put their budget where it will deliver the greatest results by eliminating irrelevant segments and focusing spend on targets with predefined traits like demographics, age, gender, geolocations, browsing history, and online activities.
Some other key findings include the use of video as a key driver of programmatic investment amongst agencies; 54% of agencies now buy more than 41% of their video inventory programmatically compared to 50% in 2019. And, with the rise in advertiser investment in programmatic, ads.txt inventory purchasing is increasing, as is awareness. 52% of Publishers meanwhile said they were selling more than 81% of their ads.txt inventory.
Today, the buy-side continues to evolve towards hybrid models. In 2019, 15% of advertisers stated that they had a hybrid model for programmatic trading. This has increased to 30% in 2020.
What Are the Best Practices in Programmatic Ad Targeting?
So, as more brands embrace programmatic, what are the best practices to improve your ROI?
1. Behavioral targeting: This is an important way to connect with customers by delivering relevant ads based on their behavior signals such as search history, browsing habits, social media interactions and purchase behaviors.
2. Hyper-local targeting: Multi-location brands can leverage programmatic ROI by focusing on specific geographical locations. Google and Facebook, for examples, deliver hyperlocal targeting to serve specific users right down to their street addresses.
3. Ad-spend optimization: Marketers use predictive customer lifetime value (CLTV) to analyze future revenue generation by existing customers. This strategy optimizes downstream behavior like purchase decisions, app downloads and online engagements.
4. Relevant intent signals: Actionable data insights sourced from diverse touch points enable tighter ad targeting as brands can run – and adjust – campaigns based on real-time campaign performance. This is an important way to maximizes ROI and avoid wasteful spends.
5. Frequency caps: We recommend brands differentiate cross-channel users and prevent them from viewing duplicate ads. Our Analytics teams help ensure you controls each users’ ad impressions on an hourly, weekly or monthly basis. This makes better use of programmatic media budget by avoiding repetitive ad displays to the same users.
6. Attractive brand visuals: As the Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising study showed, video remains the preferred visual media to drive the best ROI. Consistency breeds trust and brand relevancy. To make your ads more recognizable, make sure you follow your own brand guidelines and deliver not only a consistent message, but also a consistent look and feel.
If you’d like assistance in developing the right programmatic campaigns for your brand, contact us today.
