Programmatic Marketing: Why It Is So Successful + Some Challenges

Programmatic advertising provides a sophisticated ecosystem that automates the buying and selling of ad inventory between brands and publisher websites. This happens through an automated bidding system that works in real-time and within milliseconds. To learn more about what programmatic marketing is, and how it really works, check out our previous blog on the topic.

According to Statista, by the end of this year, global programmatic ad spend alone is projected to cross a whopping 600 billion dollars. Which is why programmatic marketing has become one of the most preferred ways for advertisers to run ad campaigns. However, some concepts of programmatic advertising and its ecosystem remain complex and understanding of it among marketers is still a bit cloudy. In this blog, we have decided to further elaborate on programmatic marketing by highlighting its main advantages and disadvantages, so you can better assess the usefulness of this marketing technique for your business and simplify its execution.

Why Is Programmatic Marketing Successful?

Programmatic marketing opens up opportunities that would not be possible with manual ad placement. The range of Kuwait digital marketing services now also includes programmatic marketing at its core. Here’s why:

1. Setting the frequency and time - With programmatic marketing, when setting up your bid, you can also set the frequency of and the time when you want your ad to be displayed. For instance, if your target demographic typically browses the internet at daytime, you can tailor your campaign so that you automatically bid only for those ad spots that appear in the morning. This feature helps you better target your audience and prevents you from wasting money on bids that will not be seen by your people.
2. Setting the price - Just like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, programmatic marketing lets you set the maximum bid amount you are willing to pay. Setting the price helps you gain better control over your advertising budget. Google Ads can also determine when best to use your budget on a day-to-day basis. For instance, it may be more beneficial to run ads for a restaurant just before the weekend, as people usually eat out on the weekends. This way, budgets, whether big or small, can be used more efficiently.
3. Relevant impressions - Since you are only paying for relevant impressions, you end up investing money in people who are more likely to convert, increasing your ROI. You can also set the minimum number of impressions you wish to receive, helping you achieve your campaign goals more effectively.
4. Different mediums - Programmatic advertising can be used on desktop, mobile, video, apps, etc., allowing you to easily tailor your ads to the medium of your liking. It lets you reach your target audience through the medium they engage with the most. You can also hire Kuwait graphic design companies to create different ad types and mediums to engage with different types of audiences.
5. Real-time flexibility - Based on ad impressions, advertisers can make real-time adjustments to their ads. It puts you in a proactive instead of a reactive position.
6. Transparency - Advertisers have complete visibility of their campaigns and can track and analyze every tiny aspect of their advertising decisions. By gaining insight into the type of audiences that interact with their ads, they can fine-tune their strategies and hypertarget the right customer base.
7. Scalability - Programmatic advertising platforms include millions of websites and ad spaces, making it ideal for advertisers who wish to expand their reach since they can easily access a broad and diverse audience across multiple channels and devices.
8. Tackling ad frauds - With traditional media buying, it was not uncommon for publishers to dupe advertisers through various fraudulent tactics, even when working with reputed digital marketing companies. However, the transparency offered by programmatic advertising platforms today, lets advertisers evaluate and compare each publisher in real-time based on their ad performance. The publisher that delivers the best results, gets chosen. These platforms also use machine learning to help identify fraudulent clicks.

Programmatic marketing is not just beneficial for advertisers. Publishers can also access deals and different types of bidding (more on that some other time) that maximize their revenue. With automation tools, they can save on time required to find advertisers, and can communicate and collaborate with advertisers with greater ease and effectiveness. Programmatic advertising also lowers costs for publishers and increases their profit margins, allowing them to earn more from their ad space.

What are Some Challenges Involved in Programmatic Advertising?

1. Ad Fraud - Although online advertising eliminates various types of frauds faced by traditional advertisers, as mentioned above, programmatic marketing has its fair share of fraudsters. The entire digital marketing industry revolves around the number of views and clicks your ad gets. Ad fraud kicks in when these impressions come from a bot instead of a human, through ad stacking, or through ghost sites. Because of this, advertisers may see huge chunks of their advertising budget disappear without any real results to account for. However, over the past few years, platforms like Google and AppNexus have started promising advertisers “fraud-free” ads, and can detect fraudulent impressions through machine learning or AI before they appear in your analysis. You as an advertiser can also combat bots by only using trusted publishers and networks, advertising on reputable websites, and working with trusted and top digital marketing agencies in Kuwait. This may cost you more, but will give you far more value than inventory.
2. Lack of creativity - Companies that spew out large-scale ads through programmatic advertising, have to constantly worry about the different ad sizes and formats that need to be identified and created for their campaigns. As a result, brands often skimp on ad creativity, leading to poor ad quality, incorrect ad formats, and lack of ad relevance. So even with programmatic’s advanced targeting and measurement tools, ad creativity suffers. A solution to this could be utilizing creative advertising technology. Features like Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) can help advertisers personalize their ads to specific demographics based on real-time data, and give them the ability to create and manage multiple ads at once. Top graphic design companies in Kuwait can also help you create high-quality ads.
3. Brand image - Since ad spaces in this type of marketing are acquired through automation, businesses are at a higher risk of having their ad placed in the vicinity of negative, offensive, or controversial content. This is especially true for platforms that rely on user-generated content like social media sites. One way to ensure the safety of your brand image is to partner with DSPs that have relevant security measures in place that effectively prohibit ads from appearing in such spaces. Some platforms even allow users to add any custom blocklists to their universal list of blocked sites.
4. Price - Programmatic advertising is great for accommodating budgets of all types. However, the programmatic market is not fully stable. Aside from fraud, measurement issues and inventory fluctuations can cause pricing to become unpredictable, especially when it comes to niche or hypertargeted impressions.
5. Knowledge - Lack of knowledge is always a challenge with new technology. The amount of new acronyms and terminology, and the constantly evolving tactics and policies of the programmatic marketing industry can make advertisers feel like they are falling behind. Plus, each programmatic platform has its own approach and its own theory on what works best. This explains why, according to Bannerflow, about 50% of people using programmatic advertising do not fully understand it. One way to overcome the knowledge gap is to consume as much information as you can. More knowledge on the field of advertising will also help you overcome other challenges advertisers usually face. You can also find a programmatic marketing partner like Design Master, skilled in social media marketing in Kuwait, who can alleviate your knowledge-overload stress and help you navigate other advertising challenges mentioned above.
6. We at Design Master, a long-standing digital marketing company in Kuwait, understand that digital marketing is a dynamic and interactive process. In order to facilitate a successful digital marketing strategy for you and help you better connect with prospective customers, we use a multi-faceted approach that combines several digital channels. To benefit from our data-driven and effective strategies tailored to your specific needs, contact our team of marketing experts today.