For decades, businesses have searched for more effective ways to connect with audiences that resonate with their offering – and programmatic advertising may be the answer. By using automated technology to identify and purchase advertising opportunities as they happen in real-time, programmatic advertising is allowing brands to overcome many of the costs and drawbacks associated with traditional ad campaigns.
For a start, a programmatic strategy allows brands to spread their message across many different channels, giving them a much broader reach than traditional media like television and newspapers. Moreover, as this technology becomes more sophisticated, it becomes better at understanding the interests and motivations of each individual consumer. In doing so, it creates scope for brands to build lasting relationships with their target audience.
With such important benefits on offer, it’s not surprising to hear that the budgets being allocated to programmatic marketing have increased dramatically in the past few years. Where brands once targeted customers based on broad qualities such as age, gender or location, programmatic now enables marketers to understand consumers on a much more granular level and leverage this in better performing campaigns.
Used in this way, programmatic can offer a validation of the marketing plan; instead of presuming who the audience might be, sophisticated data mining can provide companies with confirmation of the actual audiences (plural) that are engaging with the brand.
Brands are also investing in more and more sophisticated data crunching tools, which analyse information shared over multiple means e.g. social media in order to determine not only the audiences but also the messaging most likely to resonate with these target audiences. For example, when a brand understands an individual’s aspirations and personal preferences, it will be able to load personalised content with an appropriate message into a banner ad in real time that will appear to that individual.
At the same time, technology such as footfall trackers and beacon technology are allowing brands to collect data on consumers’ in-location activities, which is enabling brands to connect the physical and digital consumer journeys. All this consumer information is like a puzzle: the more pieces you can fit together, the clearer the picture. However, the key here isn’t the explicitly stated information, but rather the power of the insights that can be deduced from this data, including navigational habits. The brands that can successfully put these different puzzle pieces together will have the answer to one-to-one advertising.
However, even though these technological innovations may be boosting the efficiency of programmatic advertising, some obstacles remain. Sophisticated digital tracking tools now enable marketers to collect vast amounts of information about customers, which can lead to privacy concerns. To ensure this activity doesn’t become too invasive, more and more opt-in laws are being introduced to dictate the amount of data that brands can collect about customers without their expressed consent.
To secure this permission, brands will need to convince customers that they will see the benefits of sharing their personal information – but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Brands simply need to highlight the fact that any personal data retained for marketing purposes will help to ensure that customers only receive promotions that are linked to their unique preferences and interests, rather than a scattergun approach that blasts out the same advert to everyone.
By merging digital innovation with effective communication in this way, programmatic is already making great strides towards perfecting a one-on-one dialogue with customers. However, it has not yet mastered the art. For example, programmatic software can sometimes still struggle to accurately identify the same consumer across a number of different devices, which can limit its effectiveness.
Unsurprisingly, developers are already busy tackling challenges like these head on, which means that improvements in this area are happening at accelerating speed. After all, given the rewards that businesses can obtain from this highly personalised approach to marketing, programmatic will continue to be a key focus of investment for brands that want to truly engage with their customers.
By Kristoffer Ewald, chief innovation officer at NetBooster Group
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