The shift to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing for dis­play and oth­er chan­nels is hap­pen­ing at a fast pace. In the U.S. this year, pro­gram­mat­ic is expect­ed to rep­re­sent more than 60 per­cent of all dis­play trans­ac­tions. Con­nect­ing data and audi­ences that have exist­ed in silos across an advertiser’s busi­ness to their ad buy­ing tech­nol­o­gy is the future of pro­gram­mat­ic.

One day I was lis­ten­ing to music while work­ing on a pre­sen­ta­tion and a song came on that I imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized by its drum­beat. It start­ed with a beat dri­ven by the bass, snare drum, and cym­bal before going into a bluesy gui­tar riff fol­lowed by scratchy high-pitched rock vocals; the song was “Rock and Roll” by Led Zep­pelin.

At the time I was work­ing on a pre­sen­ta­tion on pro­gram­mat­ic, so it became clear to me that just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band, data pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing. And the rock band can be used as a good anal­o­gy to rep­re­sent the diverse ele­ments of pro­gram­mat­ic that are enhanced by data.

The drum­mer is cen­tral to and pow­ers the rock band like data is cen­tral to and pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing.

Data Is Fueling The Growth In Programmatic

If you lis­ten to the great­est rock songs of all time, the drum parts are often unique and dis­tinc­tive. The songs would­n’t be the same with­out the drummer’s unique style. “Rock and Roll” by Led Zep­pelin would­n’t be the same song with a dif­fer­ent drum­mer or dif­fer­ent drum part.

The same is true about data – pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing won’t get the same results with­out data. Each busi­ness has its own unique sets of data that dri­ves its busi­ness, often locat­ed in pock­ets through­out the busi­ness.

The bet­ter a busi­ness can har­ness and link their dis­parate data sets to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing, the bet­ter their results will be. An adver­tis­er may be able to deliv­er ads, but they won’t get the full ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic in terms of per­for­mance and expe­ri­ences with­out con­nect­ing it to their valu­able data assets.

Mar­keters have more data avail­able to them now than ever before. They have access to mas­sive amounts of audi­ence data – every­thing from first-par­ty online web­site vis­i­tor data to offline CRM data, sec­ond-par­ty part­ner data, and third-par­ty con­sumer and busi­ness data. Pro­gram­mat­ic enables an adver­tis­er to apply that data to dri­ve bet­ter per­for­mance for their dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

Data is fuel­ing the growth in pro­gram­mat­ic. Glob­al pro­gram­mat­ic ad spend was over $20 bil­lion in 2014 and it is expect­ed to more than dou­ble to $53 bil­lion in 2018, accord­ing to Magna Glob­al.

Data pow­ers four key char­ac­ter­is­tics and ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic. Data:

• Enables an adver­tis­er to build and reach high val­ue audi­ences.
• Fuels per­for­mance opti­miza­tions.
• Pow­ers per­son­al­ized dynam­ic expe­ri­ences.
• Dri­ves auto­mat­ed ad buy­ing deci­sions across chan­nels and devices.

Retargeting Audiences

Our singer gets a lot of attention.

If you know any rock singers, you may find that some­times their egos are a lit­tle inflat­ed. The singer is out in front of the band and loves get­ting all the atten­tion; it’s like some of our favorite adver­tis­ing audi­ences.

For dis­play adver­tis­ers, one of our favorite audi­ences is the retar­get­ing “aban­don­ers” seg­ment. Whether it’s a retail shop­ping cart aban­don­er, a trav­el­er leav­ing the book­ing process after search­ing for a flight, or a finan­cial ser­vices prospect aban­don­ing a cred­it appli­ca­tion – if a site vis­i­tor doesn’t con­vert right away, adver­tis­ers want you back for a sec­ond chance to dri­ve a con­ver­sion. And it works great.

Adver­tis­ers love these audi­ences. They rep­re­sent a high oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­vert based on the intent they have shown through their actions and we give them a lot of our atten­tion.

Like our singer who wouldn’t be able to do much with­out the rest of his band, adver­tis­ing audi­ences by them­selves are not much with­out data. Audi­ences need data – lots of data.

When adver­tis­ers find high per­form­ing audi­ences like retar­get­ing audi­ences, there are nev­er enough of them, and they want to iden­ti­fy and build more audi­ences like them. Data and audi­ence man­age­ment can help an adver­tis­er to:

• Iden­ti­fy and build high val­ue audi­ences: Hav­ing access to more data like gran­u­lar first-par­ty data (site ana­lyt­ics, offline CRM data) enables an adver­tis­er to find more high-val­ue audi­ences.
• Increase the size of their address­able audi­ences: Once we’ve iden­ti­fied high val­ue audi­ences, we want to find more users that look like that audi­ence. Data helps an adver­tis­er to increase the address­able audi­ences. An adver­tis­er can find more users that look like their best per­form­ing audi­ences using third-par­ty data (con­sumer demo­graph­ics and busi­ness attrib­ut­es) or cre­at­ing look-alike mod­els.
• Acti­vate audi­ences across chan­nels: Pro­gram­mat­ic enables an adver­tis­er to acti­vate their high-val­ue audi­ences across chan­nels to dri­ve actions and deliv­er inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.

Display Optimization Algorithms

Our guitar player is flashy and likes to show off.

How many times have you heard your dis­play ven­dor say they have the best per­for­mance and opti­miza­tion algo­rithms in the indus­try?

We, in the indus­try, love to brag about our fan­cy algo­rithms and per­for­mance. Like a gui­tar play­er who needs his band and drum­mer to tru­ly shine, the opti­miza­tion algos need data and algos are only as good as the data you put into them.

Pro­gram­mat­ic dis­play algo­rithms rely on data to opti­mize to the advertiser’s objec­tives. Data dri­ves the ad-buy­ing bid deci­sion and bud­get allo­ca­tion to best meet the advertiser’s objec­tives.

For demand-side plat­forms (DSPs), real-time bid deci­sion­ing hap­pens at the user-impres­sion lev­el.

The DSP eval­u­ates all avail­able data for a user impres­sion in real-time (or mil­lisec­onds) to deter­mine the bid amount. It con­sid­ers data sent by the ad exchange along with the bid request (site, cat­e­go­ry), adver­tis­er audi­ence data (actions on site, prod­ucts viewed, pages vis­it­ed) and oth­er data dimen­sions (like time of day, loca­tion, and device).

The pro­gram­mat­ic plat­form uses data to eval­u­ate and rec­om­mend media mix and bud­get allo­ca­tion across cam­paigns and chan­nels to opti­mize for the advertiser’s objec­tive.

Dynamic Creative Experiences

Our keyboard player fills out the sound of the band with chords and exotic sounds.

With pro­gram­mat­ic, we have the abil­i­ty to reach the same audi­ence across chan­nels and devices so we can deliv­er per­son­al­ized cre­ative expe­ri­ences across the user jour­ney.

For exam­ple, we can deliv­er a per­son­al­ized, rel­e­vant, and con­sis­tent cre­ative expe­ri­ence in a dis­play ad, on a web­site, in a social ad and in a search ad – all pow­ered by data and pro­gram­mat­ic. This is made pos­si­ble by data and audi­ence seg­men­ta­tion, and the abil­i­ty to reach those audi­ences across chan­nels through a pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form.

Dynam­ic Cre­ative Opti­miza­tion (DCO) takes dis­play per­son­al­iza­tion to anoth­er lev­el by opti­miz­ing dis­play ad con­tent in real time at a gran­u­lar lev­el based on the view­er and audi­ence.

Automated Ad Buying

Our bass player is tight with the drummer and provides a solid foundation for the band.

A core capa­bil­i­ty of a pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form is the abil­i­ty to buy and opti­mize ads across chan­nels and devices (dis­play, social, search, mobile, video) in an auto­mat­ed fash­ion with less fric­tion and human inter­ac­tion.

Pro­gram­mat­ic pro­vides effi­cien­cies such as audi­ence buy­ing across inven­to­ry sources and chan­nels with con­trols like fre­quen­cy cap­ping and bud­get plan­ning, and trans­paren­cy into inven­to­ry sources and media costs. The pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form pro­vides the foun­da­tion for pro­gram­mat­ic.

Data pow­ers the key char­ac­ter­is­tics and ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band.

Connecting Data & Audiences Is Driving The Future Of Programmatic

Led Zep­pelin would­n’t be the same band with­out a drum­mer or with­out John Bon­ham’s unique and dis­tinc­tive drum sound and style. Data pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band. Each busi­ness has unique and valu­able data that can be used to iden­ti­fy high-val­ue audi­ences and reach them via pro­gram­mat­ic and across their dig­i­tal jour­ney to dri­ve engage­ment and con­ver­sions.

Are you har­ness­ing and link­ing your dis­parate data sets to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing?