If there has been one popular protocol among marketers, it’s the programmatic, automated responses that create a more personalized connection with customers as they interact with marketing media. Programmatic is usually related to sales channel activity, and is meant to spur a satisfying customer experience.
Programmatic is typically incorporated into a larger campaign, agile marketing. Agile marketing is meant to establish a fast and tailored response to customer activity, and influences on that activity. Agile marketing consists of generating media in a 70:20:10 ratio based on varying demand of viewers:
- 70 percent planned media for standard branding. This consists of standard marketing campaigns such as paid search, display ads, search or content marketing.
- 20 percent programmatic. This is media messaging based on a potential customer’s responses generated by the planned media.
- 10 percent specialty media issued as a fast response to news events that might attract a potential customer’s interest. Chevrolet’s salute to Prince—showing a red Corvette as a reference to the singer’s popular song on the occasion death—is an example of such specialty media.
Programmatic protocols can be used for automating campaign response to high volume activity in response to the planned media (the planned media can also be bought and sold on a programmatic basis). It can be used for display and video advertising, automating the buying and ad placement process.
AdWords and Bing Ads can be included in programmatic planning, as they have incorporated video ads and can be integrated with views through a mobile device. Pay-per-click adds new prospective customers to the conversion funnel through ads that create initial awareness and a unique opportunity to convert prospects into customers at a later point in the sales cycle. In other words, using programmatic can increase your total AdWords and Bing Ads traffic and conversions faster than conventional account optimizations.
To implement a programmatic protocol in this way, a marketer works with an advertiser to insert a pixel from a programmatic vendor on their website/landing pages. The pixel collects user behavior and search intent data to develop audience lists that indicate how ads should be placed to be relevant.
Programmatic advertising offers some unique benefits, two of which are:
- Better use of a marketer’s time to focus more on strategic considerations than campaigns metrics. For example, that 10 percent specialty media in an agile marketing strategy requires attention to respond to an event. That attention can better be paid by a human marketer who understands a context than by an automated protocol.
- A more informed view of customers through the collected data. That view can refine the message sent, allowing brands to avoid offering the same creative to every user across every channel.
So what should marketers look for in planning a successful programmatic response marketing strategy? Here are a few tips:
- Map the audience behavior to channel—where possible
- Examine any data collected—to see if the programmatic triggers from your audience are primarily behavioral or location based. The answer will make a difference in how your programmatic campaign is developed. A behavioral campaign, for example—like retargeting ads aimed at customers who drop out of checkout before completion—would require programmatic ads that remind the customer of the value they missed. A location-based marketing campaign, like having users check-in at a favorite retail location, might serve ads for restaurants that are nearby.
- Evaluate customization of automated features for ads. The latest features are developed with automating tasks and bids in mind. AdWords Scripting can automate repetitive tasks, such as validating segments in a URL that can trigger media. And there are new features being introduced such as smart bidding that adjust campaign bids by device. Thus marketers should evaluate how steps are automated as a response to both ad costs and as responses to media.
- Focus on segment metrics for real time analytic reports. Most analytic platforms have real time data that can report traffic with respect to location, traffic sources and content. Marketers can use this to monitor when new or changed content from a programmatic campaign isaccessed. It is also helpful to assess how frequent the segments occur. Google Analytics, for example, can measure hits during the most recent minute or 30 minutes.
- Audit traffic purchase sources for bots and ad fraud. Marketers should seek advertising partners who can help vet bots and mysterious traffic that leads to ad fraud. Not all traffic buying will be perfect, but advertisers should be aware when unfamiliar networks add tags.
- Anchor a trial budget by testing creative against long-term objectives. The triggers for sending programmatic media consequently open an opportunity to test countless segments of an ad. Each time a programmatic protocol is triggered, a set of media can be sent to test phrases or images that lead to conversion. The tests can be conducted incredibly quickly and with accuracy using programmatic.
Overall, a good programmatic strategy should offer the best combination of ad creativity, budget parameters, and technological benefits in creating a personalized customer experience.
