1intellProgrammatic represents the culmination of decades of innovation in data technology and addressable media, and you just have to make sure now that your programmatic buying strategy unfolds with the maximum effect. For many advertisers, programmatic buying is the way to go and in fact digital advertising space is bought and purchased more and more by auction via respective online marketplaces or platforms in real-time.

Asian eMarketing recommends to consider the approach of Frank Rauchfuß, CEO of intelliAd, who highlights in one of his articles four “must-haves” for yield-optimized programmatic buying campaigns.  Although smart technology and fast computing capacity are the main features of programmatic buying, he holistically points out that the key success factor is still the human being, therefore providing the following tips:

1. Banner design: Clear and direct! Simple, but creative!

Whether and how long banners are looked at depends mainly on the design quality. Your campaign's success stands and falls with an eye-catching design of the banner. Therefore, go for clarity of content with little text and use a strong call to action. Further, make sure that your product and your brand can be seen immediately. Do not just listen to your gut feeling, but perform A / B testing for different banner designs to identify the most successful creation. A click on your promotional material should also not lead prospects to your website, but on a product- or campaign-oriented landing page that makes a purchase as simple as possible. When designing the banner, consider the standard formats (for example, medium rectangle) the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defined, as you need reach and special advertising formats are still making the exception in Programmatic Advertising.

2. Visibility: Above-The-Fold (ATF) & Below-The-Fold (BTF)

Speaking of placement, many marketers count in programmatic buying only on a playout of advertising ‘above-the-fold’ (ATF) - which means the space that is immediately visible when the page loads. This position is generally more expensive than ‘below-the-fold’ (BTF), but does not necessarily perform better. The premium "Leaderboard" - a page wide banner that is placed at the top above the actual content – for instance, slips with the first scrolling immediately from the visible area. Therefore, book ATF and BTF placements and see which variant brings in better results for your objectives. You can further optimize your performance by targeted blacklisting and that way sort out inefficient or undesirable publishers, or whitelist particularly efficient and appropriate settings.

3. Timing: Industry-Specific

In programmatic buying it is all about the right timing as well, because the shopping behavior varies in some cases considerably depending on time and day. For instance, usually less advertising is delivered on weekends, but shows that the click-through rate is significantly higher. The reason is most probably that many users surf from home at that time, with real buying interest and not - between two job duties - from the office. Accordingly, customer journey analyzes confirm that the conversion rate and sales on Sundays is the highest, but that the surfing and purchasing behavior varies greatly depending on industry and product category. It means that it can make a huge difference if you sell goods within the same industry in a mid-price category or in the luxury segment. The latter e.g. is bought more often during the day and week – to find the right timing for your industry and product category, you should therefore track your channels holistically and merge the data collected at a central location. That way, you can understand better how your customers tick and when at which touchpoints in the purchase process which display campaign work best.

4. Targeting: Individual

Keep in mind that the theme of the advertising material must be in line with the customer. With an intelligent banner generator, that can compose text and image designs dynamically, you can theoretically show each user individually tailored advertising - bespoke to customers’ interests and content-tailored to their stage of the buying process. If you want to drive new Internet users to your site that have not yet had contact with your advertising materials (the so-called prospecting or prospect targeting), a combination of designs is useful - with general brand messages (branding) followed by retargeting that offers concrete products. You can still convince users who leave your shop before buying, by offering a similar product of what they were looking for earlier. Even first-time buyers and existing customers can be motivated to a repeated purchase through intelligent retargeting with complementary products.  However, don’t forget the frequency capping, which means limiting how often every single user will see one of your banners. Especially in retargeting, too many ad media contacts annoy the user and create unnecessary additional costs.

By the way, online display advertising is usually kind of underestimated by advertisers, as the previously most widely used attribution, such as the "last click model", doesn’t attach enough value and effect to this primary brand-building and purchase assistive channel. To make clever marketing decisions, you should therefore not only optimize your display campaigns, but also consider how you can always measure and estimate the performance of the channels used.
A possible solution here is the dynamic attribution. It uncovers cross-channel effects in the customer journey, instead of just statically considering the position of advertising contacts. With this measurement method you get reliable data to embed programmatic buying best in your cross-channel strategy and to achieve the optimum effect for all of your marketing campaigns in the overall interaction.

Furthermore, it is increasingly used not only for efficient retargeting, but also for branding campaigns and the acquisition of new customers. Brands that aren’t or can’t deploy wide-reaching media like television or outdoor for their campaigns, hold the online display advertising dear - especially to generate attention and trigger subsequent conversions with a positive brand perception, for example via branded search engine advertising or the direct input of the branded URL.

By Daniela La Marca