What is Programmatic in Digital Marketing?

Programmatic advertising is a method of buying and selling digital advertising space using automated software. It allows the team at Digital Willow to bid on ad space in real-time, using algorithms to determine the most appropriate placement for our clients’ ads based on a variety of factors such as the user’s location, browsing history, context and interests. The dynamic and data-driven nature of programmatic marketing enables brands to target their ads more effectively, and allows publishers to sell their ad space more efficiently. Programmatic advertising can be used to display ads on websites, in apps, on connected TV, through digital out-of-home, across podcasts and on other digital platforms. It is a key part of the digital marketing landscape and is a rapidly growing area within the advertising industry. Digital Willow can help you find the best programmatic advertising platform(s) for your business.

Why is a Programmatic Strategy Important?

As with any machine learning, the quality of the output will depend upon the quality of the input provided by the marketer. As such, we recognise that it isn’t enough for our team to know the technicalities of programmatic advertising, we also take a wider view of your overall business and communication goals.

A programmatic strategy is a plan for using programmatic advertising to achieve a specific set of goals. A programmatic strategy might include defining target audiences, choosing the right advertising channels and exchanges, setting budgets and bid amounts, creating a whitelist of sites where ads can appear and implementing tracking and measurement systems to assess the effectiveness of the advertising. Developing a programmatic strategy often involves making decisions about which data sources to use, which algorithms to employ, and how to optimise the campaign based on performance data. It can also involve choosing the right technology and partners to support the campaign, and integrating programmatic advertising with other marketing channels and efforts.

Programmatic Buying is Growing

Indeed ‘the global programmatic advertising spend is expected to touch $557 billion in 2023, up more than 100% from five years ago‘ (Publift, 2023).

With experience in using a range of tools including StackAdapt, Xandr (formally appNexus), Choozle, Taboola, and Admob, you can rest assured that Digital Willow will be able to guide you whether you need support setting up your strategy or implementing and optimising your programmatic ad formats.

Take a look at how we used such advertising with a combination of channels in this case study: Increasing Tourism in the Isle of Man

Getting great results for your ad campaigns has never been easier when you outsource to our experts.

For more information, contact the Digital Willow team.