The murky world of Programmatic advertising, begins with its label. Before answering why Programmatic, we need to define what Programmatic advertising is?Programmed Automatic Advertising, use technology platforms and ad exchanges to find segmented, targeted audiences across Publishers and Online Video platforms.The most popular Platforms being Google Marketing Platform’s DV360, The Trade Desk, Marin, Kenshoo, or Remarketing specialists Ad Roll and Criteo.The lure of Programmatic Advertising is the promise of the old marketing maxim; right person, right time.There is a premium paid for achieving this marketer’s dream. At usually a 15% Tech Fee, on top of your agencies 10-20% media fee, add in Publisher Fees/Kickbacks/Commissions and unfortunately the premium can run as high as 50% of your advertising investment. This premium coupled with the titles of those who lead programmatic discussions as ‘Traders’, causes our spidey-senses to be on alert.The programmatic creed may be better summed up as; right person, right time, trust us. 

It is a common brief we receive as an agency to engage in Programmatic advertising. Our response is to create a baseline using Google’s Display Network and YouTube. They operate like an ad exchange, while they don’t promise the extent of segmentation opportunities and cannot access some top-tier publishers and channels, they definitely serve an 8020 minimum viable test.Before we go and pay 15%+ on technology fees, we want to establish the results that can be achieved without this fee.Intentional is programmatic-agnostic. While the majority of our work has been done via Double Click now DV360, the reality we’ve discovered is brands spending less than $1million/year on Display/YouTube campaigns will not see the value from paid platforms.

Programmatic websites, conference talks and whitepapers filled with buzzwords that’s hard to understand exactly what they do. Further the entire concept of ‘trusting’ black box software and people with ‘trader’ as their title with marketing investments, does not sit right with an intentional mindset.If you are exploring a move to Programmatic, or you are evaluating your current Programmatic advertising campaigns, we highly recommend to look at YouTube and Google Display Network for a baselining period.Our full funnel specialists can walk through with you the test audiences, placements and creative requirements to develop a baseline for future intentional Programmatic campaigns.So far, every account we have baselined has either not turned on Programmatic or turned off Programmatic due to the improved results available.Book a Discovery Call today to discuss your Programmatic project with an Intentional specialist.P.s we don’t believe in ‘Trading’ your digital media, so you won’t find any trading desks, commissions or kickback structures. To read more about our pricing and fee strategy read here.