There is probably no need to convince anyone of the advantages of personalized ads, bought in real time and targeted at appropriately selected customers. The click-through rate of a banner ad in the programmatic model is more than twice that of "ordinary" online advertising. Its use allows for an impressively higher conversion rate and better use of the advertising budget. What should every marketer know about programmatic?

Programmatic buying is conquering the online advertising market at a dizzying pace. In the USA it already accounts for 25 percent of e-advertising spending, in Poland 10 percent. It is also performing increasingly well in the world's largest internet market – China – especially in its mobile version. Personalized advertising is a concept the Polish marketer has already heard something about, but still does not know enough to be able to fully exploit its potential. Here are 5 facts that make it worth quickly filling in your knowledge.

1. Programmatic is not just buying ad impressions

1. Programmatic is not just buying impressions

RTB, the auction model for buying ads in real time, is only a small part of the potential of programmatic technology. In order to place an intelligent, individualized ad targeted at a specific user, marketers must take into account thousands of data points: from the internet user's behavior on a website and their online purchase history all the way to the current weather outside! It is worth remembering that the role of programmatic is not solely the sale of ads. The technology also enables dynamic optimization of advertising creatives – from the call to action (CTA) to modifying the banner. Therefore, beyond the automated method of ad delivery, it also allows them to be made increasingly better and more refined.

2. Big Data analysis is the key to programmatic

2. Big Data analysis is the key to programmatic

According to a study conducted by Millward Brown, the third most important area that marketers want to improve in 2015 is the use of Big Data for marketing purposes. Programmatic is based on data analysis. However, before material useful for marketing purposes can emerge from the vastness of Big Data sets, a great deal of work must be done. Many marketers already work with processed and structured data that is then used in programmatic-type ads. However, the information they possess is often only a fragment of the knowledge that could be obtained from full Big Data resources. It is therefore worth first going back to the sources and acquiring as much useful data as possible in order to truly make good use of the potential of the knowledge at hand. Marketers are often unaware of how much information they possess!

3. Customer segmentation increases the effectiveness of programmatic advertising

3. Customer segmentation increases effectiveness

Programmatic advertising is twice as effective as "ordinary" e-advertising sent en masse to consumers. Marketers can make it even more effective by using segmentation, which allows the customer base to be divided into groups and adapted to specific campaign performance goals, e.g. according to the CPA or ROI rate. The most basic segmentation is the division into new and existing customers. Many advertisers are willing to invest more funds in acquiring a new customer and for this purpose most often use personalized ads sent to the user in real time. The second group, in turn, can most often receive personalized email campaigns. A more advanced way of using segmentation is Streaming CRM, i.e. personalization of ad content, airtime and channel in line with customer data coming from and updated in real time from a CRM tool.

4. Programmatic ads are smartphone-friendly

4. Programmatic ads are smartphone-friendly

According to eMarketer, the number of smartphone owners will rise to 2 billion in 2016. No wonder m-commerce is gaining importance every year, and marketers are devoting a great deal of attention to mobile advertising. If programmatic advertising is to be effective, it is worth making sure it is adapted to mobile devices. Over the past decade, many advertising banners were created in Flash, which was a significant limitation for marketing activities. Websites made using this method turned out to be incompatible with devices running Apple's iOS. The advertising industry, taught by this experience, began creating ad creatives based on HTML5. Therefore, if the mobile customer matters in a given campaign – and given the dizzyingly growing numbers of mobile device owners worldwide, it should – personalized ads, in order to achieve the greatest effectiveness, must also take into account the technical parameters for creatives in m-commerce.

5. Programmatic focuses on the individual customer

With all the automation of the process of tailoring ads to the consumer and displaying creatives to them in real time, one must not completely surrender to the mechanical setting up of an advertising campaign. First, the user is always the most important. Second, if we forget about the chosen goal, setting the next steps and analyzing current activities, there is a risk that we will lose the most valuable potential or current customers. That is why functions such as "capping", which allow for limited amounts of ads shown to an individual user within a specified time period, are needed in programmatic advertising. Without a user-oriented approach, we may put off our best customer.

Even the most intelligent platform for creating personalized ads will prove useless without knowledge of how to use it properly. That is why moving toward automation and new technologies in the world of advertising does not mean the end of investing in people. Specialists will always be needed, but the level of their specialist knowledge about tools based on new technologies will increase.

We invite you to:

Digital Programmatic & Web Technology Marketing Trends 2018 September 27, 2017 at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel in Warsaw.

http://marketingsummit.eu/digital-programmatic-marketing-summit-2017-warszawa-2-edycja/

Summary

Programmatic buying is not only the automatic purchase of ads in real time, but also dynamic optimization of creatives, Big Data analysis and advanced customer segmentation. In the USA it already accounts for 25 percent of e-advertising spending, in Poland 10 percent. The key is to use full data, not just fragments of it, and to adapt ads to mobile devices – the number of smartphones will rise to 2 billion in 2016.

Experts emphasize that even the best technology requires knowledge and human oversight. Automation does not eliminate the marketer's role, but increases their specialist competencies. It is worth remembering functions such as "capping" so as not to put customers off with an excess of ads. The article ends with an invitation to the Digital Programmatic & Web Technology Marketing Trends 2018 conference.