By Adam Wakefield

Online ad space goes under the hammer

Johan Walters, digital marketing specialist at digital marketing solutions Clicks2Customers, says programmatic buying has changed the way media is sold and bought.

“In the past, advertisers and marketers would negotiate premium media placements directly with the publisher. With programmatic, marketers can now access an ‘online marketplace’ through a platform where publishers have put their inventory up for auction in real time,” Walters says. “The biggest difference is that advertisers can now target ‘audiences’ instead of placements.”

Garth Rhoda, managing director and partner at digital consultancy firm Detonator Media, says programmatic buying offers increased efficiency for brands because the costs will be lower than buying premium media placements.

“There is a huge benefit from a targeting perspective where you can use marketing lists, a brands website, audience data, various parameters, social media, and CRM data to target your media to eliminate wastage and segment to get to your true target audience,” Rhoda explains.

“The technology makes informed decisions based on the analytics and buying in the right context, at the right time and using all the tracking possibilities that are available to you to use these days to optimise, to gain better performance and ROI.”

The more mature the market becomes and the faster the publishers evolve into the space, the more premium inventory becomes available, whereas in the past publishers would only allocate remnant or unsold inventory to the technology partners they chose.

Walters says beyond brands and advertisers being able to target their chosen audiences in real time, programmatic buying serves content across environments - web and apps – and across platforms, being desktops, smartphones and tablets, gaining “tremendous reach” in doing so.

“All the available inventory is centralised via platforms such as DoubleClick Bid Manager which allows the marketer to build strategies to access and target the inventory,” he says.

Better, faster, cheaper

Rhoda speculates programmatic buying, also known as real time buying, arose from mature digital markets requiring a more measurable, performance orientated approach to selling media to maximise their clients digital ad spend.

“Brands were asking for better use of data, benchmarking and better ways to get great placements at a more affordable price, and then a piece of technology moved into the space and now a heavy percentage of all digital in established markets gets bought in this way,” he says.

While South Africa’s was still primarily a cost per thousand (CPM) market, according to Rhoda, it was moving at speed into performance-based delivery, with most major agency lines having their own technology licenses to execute their campaigns.

South Africa  is still a CPM market for now, but it is quickly moving into the performance based with most major agency lines having their own technology licenses to execute their campaigns.

The M word and the lack of isolation

Mobile is the most used way of accessing the Internet in South Africa, so it is not surprising that according to Walters, approximately 60% of all available programmatic inventory in South Africa is on mobile.

“The unique selling point of programmatic is the ability of reaching your audience where they’re browsing, whether it’s in-app or across devices,” Walters says.

“Today’s consumer lives in a multiscreen world where the customer journey starts on one device and finishes on another. Tech providers such as DoubleClick cater for this multiscreen behaviour.”

Further, Mike Miller, currently senior vice president for sales at analytics company Zeta Interactive, stated in a guest post on Adweek.com that mobile programmatic allows for more impactful advertising through the elimination of wasteful expenditure and improved strategic decision making. 

According to Walters, with no form of digital channel marketing existing in isolation, it was important that decisions on paid search or SEO strategy be taken in concert with a brand or agency’s programmatic buying strategy.

“It’s important to track all your digital channels with a single platform giving you a single view of the customer journey,” he says. “This approach gives the marketer insight into the role of each channel and how they might impact another channel.”

Has your agency or brand used programmatic buying? Let us know in the comments below.