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Programmatic advertising is attracting continuously more interest in Poland and around the world. It gives great opportunities, but we usually do not use its potential at all stages of the sales funnel. Do you know how Programmatic can also build awareness of your brand?
Contents
- The most interesting examples of using programmatic advertising (case study).
- What is Programmatic and what are its strengths?
- Programmatic in Customer Journey – why it works great at the top of the funnel.
- Increasingly popular formats of programmatic advertising – proper for building brand awareness.
- Programmatic is growing in strength and attracts steadily more interest.
When planning marketing campaigns, we consider what ROAS we will achieve. It’s normal. But effective campaigns must take into account the entire Customer Journey, i.e. all stages of our customer’s path. Also the “upper” ones, i.e. building brand recognition and image!
A well-thought-out strategy assumes choosing the right tools and adjusting communication at all stages of the sales funnel. In this article, we will focus on Programmatic – growing in strength, attracting a lot of interest, it is recognized as the most effective and scalable way to buy digital ads.
However, we do not always accurately assess which sales stage it can effectively support. That’s what you’ll read about in this article.
The most interesting examples of using programmatic advertising (case study)
At our work, we have been using programmatic advertising for years. One of the best examples showing the potential of Programmatic is the cooperation with Rainbow Tours, where we used programmatic advertising to broadcast advertisements targeted at individual users – not audience segments. A campaign was created in which creations were created “on the fly” depending on the offers viewed by the user. It was not dynamic remarketing, the trips proposed in the advertisement were our recommendation based on the individual needs of potential customers. Advertising contributed to an increase in online sales revenue (28% year-on-year) and online revenue from paid channels (49%)
Programmatic worked great in a campaign that aimed to connect online with offline. Our task was to promote selected Rainbow Tours travel agencies located in smaller cities. The activities encouraged to visit local showrooms and make an offline purchase. The banner ad used presented proposals of attractive trips departing from nearby airports, but also the address of the nearest travel agency. The campaign resulted in a 12% increase in sales in the promoted offices.
Let’s look at other examples showing the possibilities of programmatic advertising.
The Californian Amanda Foundation, working for animals, was looking for new homes for her proteges. To increase the chance of adoption, the organization showed ads to people who were most likely to adopt a particular dog or cat.
Recipients saw display ads tailored to them (behavioral and geographical targeting was used, among others). For example, if a person was a homebody interested in small dogs, they saw banners with chihuahuas. When another showed that she likes walks – a larger individual was proposed, a companion for long hikes.
The campaign uses creations with various animals and an appropriate slogan, emphasizing the features that connect the animal and the recipient of the advertisement.
In the context of animals, National Geographic also used programmatic elements – the campaign was about saving endangered species. On “their day” digital billboards in Times Square in New York were used so that residents or tourists could take a selfie with the image of an endangered animal. They were then encouraged to post a photo with the hashtag #SaveTogether on Twitter and Instagram.
The Danone brand – also on billboards, but placed next to the highway – encouraged people to try their yoghurts. It’s just that the message was adjusted to the speed of the moving vehicles – it sounded different when there was a traffic jam, differently when the passage was free and the speed of the cars was higher.
As we can see, the campaigns described above used different formats and personalized targeting… What is about programmatic advertising that gives such opportunities?
What is Programmatic and what are its strengths?
Programmatic is a modern, fully automated model for purchasing advertising space on the Internet. Its popularity is growing year by year, mainly due to the possibility of reaching highly personalized groups of recipients.
Advertising can be purchased on any website that offers space – from large websites to small local websites.
The purchase can be made in several ways, mainly by:
- Ad exchange (RTB) – a standard valuation and analysis of the received offers is created, and the advertising space is made available to the selected client.
- Programmatic direct – means the purchase of space directly from the publisher.
- Private Marketplace – This system is similar to a real-time auction, except that only selected advertisers can participate in it.
Programmatic enables the implementation of sales campaigns. However, it is no less effective in building brand awareness and image. We often forget about it, not using its full potential.
Programmatic in Customer Journey – why it works great at the top of the funnel
Some of us probably remember that when Programmatic appeared on the Polish market – and it was about a decade ago – it was perceived as a “performance” solution, i.e. one whose task is to increase sales. Today, no one diminishes this role, but marketers have noticed how much it can build brand awareness and effectively support marketing strategies in the upper stages of the funnel.
Programmatic campaigns ensure an influx of new users who can convert during subsequent contacts with the brand. They make it possible to remember the brand – the formats they offer allow you to create unforgettable, emotional creations, in addition, very well suited to the needs, but also the emotions of the recipients (note the campaigns of the Amanda Foundation or National Geographic).
More and more brands are changing the way they use programmatic advertising – so as to present their brand values and focus on the social message.
In that case, let’s list the advantages of Programmatic that support brand awareness:
- A variety of advertising formats, from simple banners (without animations) to complex rich media creations that engage users. We may display advertisements that will change depending on the weather, location, gender, sports results. They can encourage the user to interact – e.g. quizzes or mini-games. Increasingly, the audio format is also used to build emotions.
- Huge ad coverage. We can reach various target groups, also reaching websites unavailable on other advertising platforms – you can display creations on websites where we do not advertise, e.g. through Google Ads.
- high targeting possibilities. Thanks to them, we reach people who may be interested in our products – and thanks to this, the brand name will surely be remembered by them. Here are some examples:
– “interest” targeting – it concerns matching advertisements to the interests of users. The system takes into account the subject of the pages that the user has visited before.
– “regularity” targeting – ads are targeted at users who regularly visit websites on a given topic. So we can expect recipients familiar with a given topic and interesting further information.
- Controlling the reach and the number of views for a single recipient (so-called capping). By choosing different shopping models (Open Market, Preferred Deals, Private Auctions or Programmatic Guaranteed), we can impose a common display limit, saving the budget. We build the image in a conscious way, but the recipient does not feel attacked by too many advertisements.
- Viewability, i.e. ensuring the visibility of the advertisement, which ensures us that we are building the recognition of our brand (in addition, there are IAB standards that regulate what a pageview is – e.g. they consider a pageview counted when at least 50% of the banner is visible for at least 1 sec .)
- Ensuring brand safety. Taking care – and without additional formalities – that our advertisement promoting the brand name does not find itself in undesirable vicinity – e.g. information about warfare, environmental disasters, etc.
Image building is not intended to directly increase sales, but indirectly has a large impact on it. It allows you to increase brand awareness in the target group, as well as to expand this group
– says Aneta Mondry-Gałecka. Marketing Technology Director at Full Stack Experts.
What is important? Measuring effects. The first step is to answer the question of what you want to achieve in the Programmatic campaign and, therefore, what metrics you should plan to evaluate the effectiveness of. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you should consider introducing a KPI of reach, impressions, or even on-page micro-conversions that already show some user interest.
Let us also remember that today attribution models allow you to measure and evaluate traffic from various channels. Thanks to this, we see the importance of awareness activities and we can make good decisions by properly managing media budgets. According to the principle: “what cannot be measured, cannot be improved” – in the upper stages of the sales funnel, we should also approach activities very analytically.
– adds Aneta Mondry-Gałecka.
Increasingly popular formats of programmatic advertising – good for building brand awareness
Programmatic is also growing in strength due to the fact that the formats it offers are becoming steadily more popular. In this article, we will mention two – which are still new to the market, but with great prospects. So let’s be inspired by them.
The first is programmatic audio advertising. What is it about? You can buy 15-30 second audio spots or highly configurable advertising options to serve personalized messages to listeners who are likely to be interested in your product or service.
Advertising through streaming audio (which includes music, podcasts and radio) gives brands the opportunity to “enter” consumers’ daily lives and thus be close to them. It builds the relationship between the customer and the brand very well.
The second format is DOOH advertising, i.e. digital outdoor advertising. After the pandemic, it is definitely reborn, global spending on this model is significantly increasing.
Programmatic out-of-home allows brands to advertise on digital billboards and outdoor displays. The materials shown here can be original in terms of visuals, very creative and thus effectively build the brand’s memorability. They can also – in programmatic advertising – change automatically in accordance with the change of certain data, e.g. time of day, weather or even sports results (recall the campaign of the Danone brand).
Such actions arouse emotions – and it is precisely them that allow us to draw attention to the brand and keep it in our memory.
Programmatic is growing in strength and attracts more and more interest. As experts predict, in the coming years we can expect further annual double-digit increases in investments in this purchase model.
See how to increase programmatic revenues thanks to our trainings!
