Programmatic Media Buying 101: What’s The Difference Between DSPs & Ad Networks

The current programmatic media buying landscape is really just an extension of the traditional two-party system between advertisers and publishers. If you keep in mind what is being sold, who is selling it, and who is buying, it should become a little clearer.

What is the Difference Between DSPs and Ad Networks? 

The acronym DSP stands for demand-side platform. It is a buyer’s side platform for advertisers, it allows advertising buyers to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts using one interface. An ad network works operates on the publisher side of the two-party system, connecting advertisers to publishers whose web pages match the ad space supply with advertiser demand.

Defining DSPs & Ad Networks

Demand-Side Platforms (DSP)

Demand-side Platforms are used by media buyers at agencies and brands to manage and purchase digital advertising inventory from multiple ad networks through one interface. DSPs allow advertisers to buy ad impressions across a range of publisher sites, but targeted to specific users based on data such as gender, age, location and browsing behavior.
Using a single interface allows marketers to target a very narrowly defined audience segment at scale, without having to manage multiple ad networks or exchanges. The DSPs use the behavioral targeting data which is collected from cookies and data exchanges, to identify the audience segments.  DSPs let the marketers choose audience characteristics and then publishes the ads depending on the target audience.  The main advantage here is that marketers do not have to worry about picking the right websites to advertise on, as the DSPs can do the work for them.

Benefits:

  • Access to multiple inventory sources — they connect to several ad exchanges and SSPs and offer several channels
  • Media buyer can choose which sites to buy on
  • You can set the price at you think each individual impression is worth
  • Added Data segments — use third-party or first-party audience data to enhance buy

Challenges:

  • There are many different DSPs in the marketplace and you need to set up a contract with each one to have access to their platforms
  • Steep learning curve — it takes time to master the nuances of buying on each platform, unless you work with a partner like Digilant

Ad Networks

An advertising network aggregates, categorizes and sells a range of publisher inventory in a way that can be easily understood and purchased by advertisers on a fixed CPM basis, connecting advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. By aggregating inventory, Ad Networks offer advertisers the ability to better reach their target audience while allowing publishers to sell their inventory more effectively. There are many types of Ad Networks and they focus on delivering different objectives.  Some focus on delivering reach and price while others focus on audience demographics and quality.

The 3 main types of ad networks

  1. Platform for buying audience segments and data
  2. Platform for buying media
  3. Platform for creative optimization

Media companies frequently use ad networks to sell their online display inventory. However, unlike DSPs, not all ad networks support real-time bidding. They will have to incorporate a DSP, in order to facilitate real-time bidding.

Benefits

  • Centralized source for inventory for media buyers and advertisers
  • No need to buy from individual publisher sites

Limitations:

  • Lack of transparency — site reporting often masked
  • Fixed CPM — all impressions cost the same regardless of value
  • No automation — you need to contract each buy with a separate IO

What’s the Takeaway?

Technology creates efficiencies between advertisers and publishers. A DSP enables media buyers to incorporate automation using machine learning into the media buying process, giving advertisers access to more sophisticated targeting tools, data and analytics to improve their advertising performance. DSPs consolidate purchasing needs in one platform.  But in today’s world of data privacy regulations and walled gardens, most advertisers can’t afford to use only one DSP.  Each DSP like Google, Facebook, Amazon, MediaMath, and others all offer their own unique audiences, data and targeting capabilities.  Not only that but if there are buys or a platform goes down you don’t have options. You can’t be overly reliant on the infrastructure of one partner because if they decide to change something that has implications for your business you can’t afford the lag time that might cause.

That’s why Digilant partners with all of the best platforms, giving media buyers a holistic view of their ad buys across multiple DSPs so that advertisers can measure results and get value from their ad spend.

Programmatic Media Buying 101: What is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)? What Does It Mean For Digital Advertising?

Over the past few months, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) acronym has been thrown around often in the programmatic media industry, as everybody scrambles to define what it means for them and how to apply it.  At least on this side of the ocean, it seems like most digital marketers are still unaware of what the GDPR is and the heavy implications it holds on their programmatic media buying future.

What is GDPR?

The GDPR Transparency & Consent Framework was launched in Europe on April 24, 2018,  with the objective to help all companies in the digital advertising industry ensure that they comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, when processing personal data or accessing non-personal or personal data on user devices.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has recently established new requirements for companies that collect,use, and share data about EU citizens. As of May 25, 2018, all companies handling data of EU citizens must adhere to these new data privacy and security measures, regardless of whether the organization is located within the EU or not. After this date, companies around the world will no longer be allowed to collect or process consumer data from EU citizens without identifying their legal basis for doing so.  Not only that, but the same companies will also be barred from using any previously collected data if it wasn’t on-boarded with the appropriate notice and consent. Companies that fail to comply with any of these new rules and regulations could be subject to fines as high as 20 Million Euros or 4% of their annual global revenue.

However, the new European privacy policy affects more than just data miners and web developers and more than just European businesses.  Data controllers and any subcontractors will be obligated to maintain written records of their data processing activities, including why they’re processing the data and how long they plan to keep it and must be made available to data protection authorities upon request.  It’s crucial that digital marketers prepare themselves, because even if you’re operating outside the borders of the EU, if any of the data your organization collects goes through the region, then it’s subject to the legislation.

GDPR Starts Right Now

For digital marketers the changes will start immediately with websites. For example, we are accustomed to reading this message on many websites: “We use cookies to ensure that we give the best experience to the user on our site. If you continue browsing we will assume that you agree.” With this notice, or similar messages, the editors would be considered authorized to insert cookies for the visitor, but now, this will change. 
With GDPR, the copy used by the organizations to obtain legal consent must explain in a clear and concise manner why their data is being collected and what it will be used for, before it can be stored, processed, analyzed, and transmitted. When referring to personal or identifiable data, this that means personal data which is now classified as any information that could be used to identify a person, including location data, mobile device IDs and, in some cases, IP address. (Biometric and genetic data is considered to be “sensitive personal data.”)  Data that can be re-identified by data scientists or analysts with effort, by combining it with additional data points, is also considered personal data.

Article 4.1: “personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.”

What Does That Mean for Programmatic Advertisers on the Other Side of the Ocean?

While companies figure out how to comply with the new rules there might be a loss of momentum with data tech innovation.  GDPR will require programmatic advertisers to obtain active consent from users to use their personal information, and also give them the power to erase their accumulated historical data from any database they wish, thus being more transparent.
With the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, there has been a lot of progress on the way programmatic advertising technology uses consumer data to provide intelligent and automated ad targeting. With these regulation changes we might see a halt in the progress made to enable automated and personalized advertising.  The implications of GDPR could somewhat restrict the extent of the role that AI-driven data insights and intelligence technology plays in the future. This will create significant challenges for the innovation of programmatic advertising.  That said, it is even more important today that programmatic service providers introduce other emerging technologies with the capabilities needed to address the goals of GDPR and ensure both secure and efficient advertising.
One emerging technology that could have a significant impact on programmatic advertising and how marketers deal with GDPR is blockchain. Blockchain has the ability to create a highly secure trading network for advertisers, by publicly storing data to create a permanent audit trail with an unchangeable record of all transactions that occur within the programmatic buying marketplace. This provides marketers with full visibility into their ad buy, to better track all transactions that are taking place automatically and a record of all transactions taking place throughout the ad-buying and selling process.

Possible applications for Blockchain to abide by GDPR rules and regulations:

  • “Do Not Record” personal data on a blockchain
  • Record personal data pseudo-anonymously
  • Encrypt the data on the blockchain
  • Store the data in a referenced encrypted database

What Else Should we Expect from GDPR?

Trust and transparency have been leading many of the conversations about programmatic advertising, and GDPR may serve to accelerate the industry-wide push for more accountability.  Blockchain is one solution but there are other solutions waiting to be discovered and tried out.  Over the next several months we will see more on how the EU applies GDPR in a practical manner, so the approaches and implementation of new technologies like blockchain should become clearer.
Programmatic advertisers, marketers and publishers may be held accountable for non-compliance by third party data providers, which means all players in the ad tech ecosystem will become more reliant on one another. What this also means is that the ad-tech ecosystem will be a lot pickier with who we choose as partners and how many partners and publishers we all work with. Contracts will need to be revised to ensure compliance, and for publishers it will be an opportunity to gain leverage to demand transparency regarding the data used by any of their partners or platforms.

For more information on the GDPR, its goals, what you need to do to be compliant, and Digilant’s commitment to the regulation, download our white paper below.

You can also check out our privacy policy or contact us at [email protected] to learn more.

Programmatic & Digital Advertising Leader Adds Jenna Umbrianna Gino to Executive Suite

The Addition of Industry Veteran Bolsters Anagram’s Market-Leading Programmatic Capabilities

BOSTON, May 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Anagram — a digital media agency built for the modern marketing era, and part of the ispDigital group of digital marketing technology companies — announced the hiring of Jenna Umbrianna Gino as Chief Client Officer. In her new role, she will be responsible for the design, development, and management of the company’s customer experience delivery capabilities, as well as serve as executive-in-charge of client services.
Jenna Umbrianna Gino brings a wealth of experience from all facets of the industry to Anagram, having worked at both globally recognized brands and large advertising agencies. Active at the intersection of marketing and technology for a decade, she’s one of only a handful of industry executives who have managed the design, launch and operation of two successful programmatic trading desks — first at Hill Holliday, a unit of IPG, and then at Affiperf, a division of Havas. Both IPG and Havas are among the leading five advertising agencies in the world.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Anagram,” says Jenna Umbrianna Gino. “I’m excited about the company’s strategic direction of meeting the marketing demands of the modern era. I appreciate how its leadership embraces fully transparent client communication strategies, and has created a company culture that facilitates recruitment of top talent.”

Joe Zawadzki, CEO and Founder of programmatic industry leader MediaMath, remarked, “I, and all of us at MediaMath, have been fortunate to work with Jenna for the past decade. We are excited for Jenna, for Anagram, and for the industry. Her ability to not only envision a better world for marketing, but to drive teams, clients, and partners toward that vision and ideal state is a rare and deeply needed gift.”

Before joining Anagram, Jenna Umbrianna Gino served as Partner and Research Director at Invisible Science, an independent research and advisory firm focused exclusively on programmatic marketing. Previously, she was Senior Vice President and General Manager at Havas — one of the world’s largest advertising agencies — where she managed programmatic strategy and trading activities across the North American client roster. Jenna Umbrianna Gino has also held a variety of marketing and advertising roles at Hill Holliday, a top 20 agency in the U.S and part of the IPG network.

“We’re very fortunate to be adding Jenna to the executive team,” says Adam Cahill, Founder and CEO of Anagram. “Her addition immediately strengthens our client strategy and service capabilities. Jenna is one of the pioneers in the programmatic industry, and we know our clients will enjoy more success with her on board.”

About Anagram

Anagram is a digital media agency built for the modern marketing era, with data and technology at our core. As marketing becomes more complex, we find that our client’s needs are quite varied, and tend to evolve over time. In some cases, we operate as a full-service digital media agency of record, planning, buying and optimizing campaigns across all digital channels. In others, we provide strategic counsel and systems integration services, assisting our clients as they build their internal capabilities. We’ve built our company around biddable media from day one: the way we work, the technologies we use, and the talent we hire are all oriented around an approach that is data-driven, fast, fluid, and outcome-obsessed.
Anagram is an ispDigital Group Company.  For more information, visit us at www.anagram.io and follow us on Twitter @AnagramLLC.
SOURCE: Anagram LLC
Contact: Karen Moked, VP of Marketing, Digilant: [email protected]

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Programmatic Media Buying 101: What is the Difference Between AI, Machine Learning & Programmatic?

The world of digital advertising and programmatic advertising has developed its own language in the last couple of years, full of terms that are commonly heard and used everywhere but mean something very specific when attached to the word advertising. Most recently it’s almost impossible to read an article or even talk about media buying without bringing up the terms Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning. The terms AI and machine learning are often used interchangeably but they are different. What is the difference between the two and what should they mean to us or me as a marketer or CMO?

AI for Programmatic Buying

Artificial intelligence is the concept of reproducing human intelligence in machines so they can execute on activities that normally would require a human brain to be involved in, such as making data-based decisions.  By using AI-powered systems brands and advertisers case save money and time by completing tasks faster than us mere humans and make less mistakes.  When you apply this to the programmatic media buying industry, you bring efficiency to the media buying process, freeing people who’s job it is buy media from the more tedious and allowing them to focus on the strategic and creative elements of their jobs.

The reason digital media executives keep talking about AI technologies is that they allow us to have algorithms that analyze a user’s behavior, allowing for real time programmatic campaign optimizations towards consumers who are more likely to convert. Advertisers then have the ability to gather all this rich audience data to then use it to be more accurate with their media buys and overall targeting tactics – ultimately spending less money and time and bringing in a higher ROI.

Will Machine Learning Replace Media Buyers?

The words Machine Learning can conjure up images of old sci-fi movies in which someone develops an intelligent robot that then dominates its creator or destroys a large city… leading to many questions about how this technology could affect the digital media industry.
Machine learning is a type of Artificial Intelligence that provides computers or robots with the ability to learn things by being programmed specifically to take certain actions, improving their knowledge over time, much in the same way our brains do.
Computers using machine learning focus on imitating our own decision-making logic by training a machine to use data to learn more about how to perform a task.

Imagine you ride your bike to work every day. Over time, after trying different ways to get to work, you will learn which route is faster or maybe which road or path is better according to the day of the week or based on the weather outside. This is exactly how machine learning works. You feed the computer or algorithm with large amounts of data so it will analyze information from the past and learn from it to apply the learnings to any new data it receives in the future.

When applied to programmatic advertising, machine learning algorithms can analyze large volumes of data from difference sources and draw conclusions from it. It means you can almost replicate the brain of an experienced media buyer in a machine or algorithm so it becomes capable of  predicting, planning and optimizing media. Almost…. but not yet, though the machines can certainly make programmatic advertising more efficient, faster and easier to implement, there remain many factors which need human brains to input link the machine learning to an overall media buying strategy.

So How are AI and Machine Learning Connected to Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling ad inventory through an exchange, connecting advertisers to publishers rather than having to make individual deals with each publisher. This process uses artificial intelligence technologies to improve efficiency and make better decisions for the advertisers with their budgets.
There is a lot of investment being made in marketing and ad buying technologies to leverage AI.  Companies like Xaxis, are betting heavy on AI for improving their future Programmatic Buying Platforms.  Fo right now marketers are using AI to stitch massive amounts of their data together, but it still hasn’t replaced human analysis.  For media agencies, Artificial Intelligence is still more a buzzword or a catchphrase to get peoples attention.

David Lee, programmatic lead at ad agency The Richards Group, said that he regularly gets pitches for AI-enabled products but the AI part of the products usually “doesn’t seem to affect performance outside of being a buzzword.”

You need Machine Learning to feed AI but you don’t need AI for Machine Learning. What that means is that machine learning is the technique — using algorithms to process data, learn from insights and make predictions for future programmatic campaigns which then trains the AI.
Both Machine Learning and AI are here to stay.  If you are a marketer or a media buyer, get familiar with these terms as they will continue to occupy the press and blogs like ours.  But for now they are not taking over for humans, that’s still in the sci-fi section of the video library.

Programmatic Media Buying 101: How the Industry is Solving Domain Spoofing and Ad Fraud with Ads.txt & Private Marketplace

In 2018 the ad tech industry, and especially the top DSPs, are going to focus on improving inventory quality for programmatic media, as seen in our top ten trends you need to know about programmatic this year.

What Does Inventory Quality Mean?

Over the past few years, the quantity of fraudulent ads has decreased greatly as the ability to monitor and prevent ad fraud has improved. However, there was still a significant room for improvement. Much of the development that has been made is for desktops ads. As the digital ad buying process continues to become more transparent and ad inventory quality improves, focus now needs to be centered on mobile and video ads. Video ads are extremely enticing to ad fraudsters due to high CPMs. The importance of eliminating fraud and enhancing the quality of ad inventory benefits both buyers and publishers.

On the buyer’s side, there are two major reason to ensure quality ad inventory: brand safety and media waste. If a buyer purchases fraudulent ad space and their brand is presented in a negative environment, it can greatly affect their brand image. In regard to media waste, if an ad is bought and only viewed by bots, instead of human eyes, the media spend is wasted on false impressions. Purchasing quality ad inventory ensures that an ad shows up on the site it is supposed to be published on and that human eyes are viewing it.

Publishers are primarily concerned with ensuring a quality customer experience. Customer experiences are deterred through malware or annoying ads. If the ad exchange is not properly screened, malware can arrive on a publisher’s site. If the consumer clicks on the ad, it will infect their browser, creating a very negative customer experience. Customers do not like when ads refresh, flash or are otherwise annoying. Publishers need to ensure that this is not occurring with their advertisements.

Publishers and buyers need to work together to become a trusted source of quality inventory which involves the following:

  1. Publishers sharing information with one another about negative buying experiences.
  2. DSPs need to educate their advertisers, that buying ad space from many different sources opens up the door for ad fraud.
  3. Create realistic standards for viewability. It is unrealistic to set 100% viewability goals.

Solutions for Fraud and Domain Spoofing

Private Marketplace Deals

Ad space was traditionally bought through open marketplaces. This is a process in which multiple media owners offer up their ad inventory to multiple buyers. All of the buyers compete to have their ad space placed on a page and the highest bidder wins.
Private marketplaces are auctions that are only open to select advertisers through an invitation-only format. Some of these entail only one publisher offering up ad space, others have a few. Before the auction, buyers and sellers negotiate a deal. Each deal is given a unique ID and advertisers bid on that deal only – inventory that does not meet the deal will not be bid on. This marketplace structure requires more work however, it is much more transparent. Buyers will know where their ad is being placed such as the URL of the website their ad will be shown on. The marketplace ensures a more transparent ad buying process and ensures that buyers ads show up exactly where they want them to, reaching the right audience in the right place.  

DSPs Are Implementing Ads.txt

IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has released the latest mechanism that boosts inventory quality and makes the ad buying process less risky. In September, IAB released the authorized digital sellers or ads.txt. This is a simple, flexible method for publishers and distributors to clearly state which companies are authorized to use their digital inventory.

Companies drop a text file on their website that lists the different companies authorized to sell inventory on their site. This will enable buyers to see which programmatic firms have authorization to sell ad space on specific websites, ensuring validity in their purchase. The upkeep for this process is also simple. Someone will have to monitor additions to an ads.txt list to stay up to date with authorized sellers.

If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed and get going.  Need more information you can also reach out to us here.

Programmatic Media Buying 101: Why Viewability Is An Important Metric For Media Buyers?

Viewability refers to the likelihood that an ad is viewed by an actual human user. While that may sound strange, up to 57% of ads served are not considered viewable.

What does it take to consider an ad viewable?

Impressions are considered viewable for both desktop and on mobile when they appear within a user’s browser and have had the opportunity to be seen. Industry standards for display ads are as follows: 50% of the ad has to be visible on the screen for at least 1 continuous second. For larger banner ads on desktop or mobile, only 30% of the ad pixels need to be on screen for one continuous second for the ad to be counted as viewed. For video ads, the viewability standard is different, the ad must have at least 50% visibility on screen, and must have been viewable for at least 2 seconds.

Viewability as a key performance indicator

Viewability has become an important metric. Digital marketers want to confirm that ads are seen and their campaigns perform as expected. Beyond validating that advertisers get what they paid for, using viewability as a metric also provides insight into the quality of impressions and evaluates the quality of a publisher’s inventory.

The need to be seen

The increasing demand for 100% viewability may mean that much of publishers’ inventory is no longer sellable. With a drop in the amount of inventory that advertisers are willing to buy, publishers would have to increase the CPMs to make up for the gap in revenue. Delivering 100% viewability isn’t necessarily impossible for publishers; Facebook for example is currently guaranteeing 100% viewability.

However, not all advertisers are demanding 100% viewability; some advertisers report desirable performance results–such as click through rates (CTR)–are coming from inventory with only 60% viewability. In direct response (DR) campaigns, KPIs are independent of viewability, measuring conversions over impressions, using a Cost Per Click (CPC) or  Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) pricing model. But CTR or conversions aren’t as useful of metrics when the campaign goal is to drive awareness.

How to measure viewability 

For both mobile and desktop – banners and videos – viewability is measured through various ad verification strategies by different platforms. Verification strategies are based on industry standards and provided by companies that enable third-party measurement and ad verification.

Digilant is integrated with the top tier third-party measurement and ad verification vendors, including DoubleVerify,  Sizmek’s Peer39 and Integral Ad Science, to block programmatic advertising fraud on a pre-bid basis and to filter suspicious traffic.  Sites with content promoting hate speech or illegal activity are excluded from the market and added to a dynamic block list.

Verification helps to ensure viewability and identify ad fraud — such as nonhuman traffic from bots registering clicks — which is never considered viewable. But viewability alone doesn’t guarantee better performance.

What does viewability do for your campaign?

Viewability doesn’t guarantee increased ad performance, but viewability and performance are linked.

For example, studies have shown that how long an ad is continuously visible has a higher impact on performance than the percentage of the ad viewed.

Players in the ad tech industry such as Integral Ad Science, comScore, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are all working toward understanding viewability, setting standards and guidelines. However, discrepancies in counting methodologies still exist — both in the final numbers and in the methods themselves.

Summary

It’s helpful to keep some more qualitative factors that improve viewability — and improve performance — in mind. While it’s trickier to define metrics for all aspects of viewability, advertisers should keep certain aspects in mind that might impact their viewability, such as:

  • Viewability is defined as a display ad that is at least 50% above the fold, for 1 second – or 2 seconds for video.
  • Viewability as a KPI helps advertisers gauge the value of inventory.
  • There is an increasing demand for 100% viewability, which could impact pricing from publishers.
  • Both measurable and qualitative factors impact viewability, which impacts ad performance.
  • Buyers need to keep best practices in mind when buying inventory, like keeping logos at the top of ad creative and avoiding ad clutter.

Ready to optimize your ad performance? Start leveraging viewability metrics to enhance your campaigns and drive better results with Digilant today.

The 7 Most Common Errors Programmatic Media Buyers Should Avoid

Many brands still don’t take advantage of all the possibilities offered by programmatic advertising, preventing them from increasing the profitability of their media buy and maximizing their ROI.

Instead, if brands leveraged the potential of programmatic advertising they could broaden their audience, reaching twice as many unique users, increasing conversions by more than 36%, and reducing CPA vs. traditional online media buying methods.

Analyzing Campaign Errors

Digilant analyzed nearly 500 programmatic advertising campaigns and identified the seven most common mistakes made by media buyers that hinder performance of their campaigns.

1. Vague or overambitious campaign goals.

Although digital marketing has become increasingly precise in its targeting, it’s still very common for advertisers to want to cover too many goals or KPIs at once with their programmatic investment. Advertisers should be clear in setting their KPIs to whether for example they are looking to increase brand awareness in a new market, drive online conversions or in-store traffic, or other goals.  That starting point is imperative, the advertiser’s target must be aligned with the most appropriate programmatic tactics, which will ultimately improve campaign performance and ROI.

2. Failure to segment audience data using programmatic technology.

When provided with large volumes of user data, the possibilities of different types of audience segmentation are endless. There are about 200 individual data points associated with each online user, and by using dynamic programmatic reporting, marketers can create profiles that allow for real-time segmentation and thus increased performance.  To capitalize on this enhanced campaign performance, the audience must be segmented at several levels. With each layer, the objective is to filter and eliminate users that do not fit the target audience for that brand.

3. Ranking users without considering their value.

By applying machine learning and using data from advertisers and third party data providers, it’s possible to determine the appropriate user profiles for the advertiser to target in real time that are most likely to convert. Skipping this step puts campaigns at risk for failure. After identifying users’ behaviors, predictive algorithms can be applied to determine the value of each profile and user in real time. Knowing the value of the user will allow the audience to be segmented efficiently and effectively, by focusing the campaign on the right users and increasing the investment on users who will be more prone to make a purchase.

After executing a campaign it’s important to reexamine consumer conversion data to optimize the effectiveness of future media buying actions, as brands can exponentially enhance the returns on their programmatic campaigns by knowing more about their user behaviors and attributes.

4. Delivering the same creatives to customers and leads.

One of the great strengths of programmatic advertising is its predictive ability. It is possible to apply data science algorithms to find potential “new consumers”, not just recycle the same users gained through retargeting.

But it would not make sense to send the same message to the every user. It is necessary to personalize the messages directed to the different profiles that the campaign wants to impact, using technologies like Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to optimize the ad investment. This level of customization is not done as often as it could be for programmatic campaigns, which can negatively impact performance.

5. Low investment in attribution.

Insights gleaned from programmatic KPI metrics allow marketers to understand campaign performance at a level that is unmatched by other traditional channels such as print advertising or television. The added invested in attribution gives media buyers the opportunity to analyze the results beyond last click, which is a one dimensional view of online marketing and doesn’t allow for full funnel analysis.

Attribution allows you to understand how the media really affect results. For example, actions in the media may be linked to loyalty data or to credit card transactions; So by using attribution technology it is possible to measure the impact of a campaign or a channel on the final conversion of a new customer. In addition, advertisers can also analyze the impact of a campaign on the brand and the perception of users.

6. Campaign reports are not optimized for future strategies.

Programmatic ad buying provides more metrics, information and data than any other advertising medium. Taking advantage of these real-time stats can help brands and agencies discover ideas that are not always intuitive to them and guide the strategy of their next campaign.

For example, a sportswear retailer may be focussed on targeting a totally male audience. However, a programmatic campaign using intelligence gained through data science could reveal that its highest performing audience is actually in the segment of women aged 25-34.

7. Using the wrong marketing channels.

There are many ways to reach an audience programmatically — desktop, mobile, apps, video, native advertising, audio and traditional television, for example.

Each channel offers potential advantages and drawbacks that marketers need to carefully weigh when deciding where to allocate their ad spend. If the priority is to take a low-cost action with a quick return on advertising investment, it’s best to invest your budget in display. Video and audio justify the highest CPM if you pursue better brand recognition.

It is also important to keep cross-device segmentation in mind, as the average consumer connects to the Internet through five or more devices daily.

Programmatic ad buying relies on advanced data science solutions to provide marketers with a comprehensive understanding of their respective marketplace and at the same time gives them the tools they need to set out more precise guidelines for optimize advertising campaigns and increasing their ROI. However, many companies still treat their target audience as one large segment, often employing obsolete tactics without analyzing the consumer’s behaviors, interests and attitudes, to find the right segments within that large audience to target.

Advanced segmentation, especially adaptive segmentation allows you to identify the most essential existing audiences for a brand and uncover new key segments. It is as important to spend time with your media buyer to find the right tactics and channels for a programmatic campaign, as it is to learn from the results. The flexibility provided by programmatic advertising allows a continuous optimization during and after a campaign. The analysis and strategy prior, during and after the campaign will ensure that future media buys will have better results for the investment made

Summary 

  • Too many campaigns are executed without having properly analyzed the value of each user, which is essential to effectively segment the audience, thus improving performance: investment should be increased in clients more prone to conversion.
  • The second most costly error: do not apply algorithms or look alike models to find potential “new consumers” by recycling users gained through retargeting. The messages are not targeted to the different profiles that the campaign wants to impact, and the investment is therefore not optimized.
  • Unclear objectives, mistaken marketing channels, inability to identify adequate data layers, poor measurement of objectives and not optimizing the information obtained are other frequent mistakes.
  • Properly using the potential of programmatic advertising allows advertisers to broaden their audience, reaching twice as many unique users, increasing conversions by more than 36%, and reducing CPA versus traditional online methods.

Programmatic Media Buying 101: YouTube Advertising Best Practices

Video has a lot to offer digital marketers and consumers. In 2017, video will account for almost 70% of all internet traffic. With additional advances in connectivity and mobile technology, streaming big video files is no longer prohibitive, enabling users to share a wide array of content.

Buying YouTube Advertising

As a medium for marketing, video requires more time and effort to produce than a Instagram Post, Tweet or Facebook Status Update, but the overall payoff can match or go much beyond the investment. Once efforts to produce content are made, marketers attempt to gain the most from their creative content by leveraging social media to make sure it gains visibility and recognition so they can earn return on their investment (ROI).

Of the top seven social media platforms, YouTube ranks as the 4th highest in usage by consumers, and of those seven, it’s the only platform specializing in video.

Topping the list of online video platforms, YouTube has made it easier for marketers in many ways by offering:

  • An easy to use format for posting and sharing videos on any social media channel
  • A wide reach and plenty of traffic: 1 billion users, who spend millions of hours watching videos daily
  • Global reach in over 70 countries and 76 languages
  • The ability to go anywhere the user goes – over 50% of video play comes from mobile audiences
  • A truly social video channel with options to share, like, comment and subscribe which helps to drive interest-based traffic
  • Search features makes videos the answers to consumers’ questions

And that’s all just a part of setting up a YouTube channel.

Brand Advertising Campaigns

When it comes to using the YouTube platform as a mechanism for brand promotion advertising campaigns, there are two ways to go about paid advertising:

  1. In-display ads: appear in YouTube search results, as related videos, or on websites that belong to the Google Display Network.
    • These display as the results of a search or appear on the right hand side of a video being viewed as related content.
  2. In-stream ads: appear as pre-roll before a video plays.
    • Pre-roll ads may have a “skip ad” or a “Your video will play in 10 seconds” notification to let viewers know the ad’s duration.

Advertising Targeting on YouTube

To target audiences for these ads, advertisers use a variety of targeting options that are also found within programmatic campaigns such as keywords, location, time of day, network, language and device type. While video offers marketers the opportunity to engage and provide value through things like demos, testimonials, and “how to” content – it’s not as easy to produce as a tweet, blog or white paper.
When setting up these campaigns in a programmatic self-service platform, advertisers set their maximum bid price even with no guarantee that the video will be viewed in its entirety.

Best Practices for Video Advertising 

Marketers need to keep in mind that with video, quality matters. Not only do the audio and visual components need to be high quality, but the content should follow as well. If these factors fall short, and your video isn’t useful or engaging, it’s not valuable.

For both advertising and brand channel pages, YouTube provides reporting analytics that help to quickly assess and optimize the posted video and it’s targeting on your programmatic platform. These video metrics give marketers a lot of insight into how much of the video is being viewed or engaged with. This information can be used as a way of gauging intent signals, for example, a video that’s been completed can indicate a qualified marketing lead and is also a re-marketing opportunity.

Best Practices Summary

  • Video is on the rise, and YouTube tops the list of online video platforms.
  • YouTube also ranks among top social platforms and provides real social features such as share, like, comment and subscribe.
  • Marketers can get a big return on investment by creating quality video that engages and provides value for users.
  • Video gives marketers insight into intent signals and the opportunity to drive qualified traffic from YouTube to sign up or purchase pages.

3 Key Elements to Successful Digital Media Buying

Regardless of the marketing strategy that a company may have in place, there are key elements to buying digital media that all brands should take into account.

However, before jumping into the elements of successful digital media buying, there is one aspect that must be worked out: defining your campaign goals. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make with any marketing campaign is trying to manage to several goals at the same time.
Digital MarketingWhile it is true that all brands aim at varied objectives and want to solve different issues, you must learn to prioritize. The important thing is to maintain a hierarchy of objectives. If you have limited resources, as is often the case, it is essential to focus efforts on the main objective, and spare no effort in trying to resolve other less relevant issues.

But it is important to understand that your target audience uses multiple channels to gather information and make their decisions. Therefore, the best strategy to reach your audience is to expose your brand to all the channels and during different stages of the buying process.
According to eMarketer, successful advertisers are investing half of their budgets based on the basic elements of digital media buying strategies. In fact, the purchase of digital media accounts for 44% of all advertising budgets.

If anything has become certain in the constantly evolving world of digital marketing, it’s that if advertisers want their campaigns to be effective and achieve their objectives, they need to understand all the key elements to buying digital media

What Are the Key Elements to Buying Digital Media?

The issue lies in defining the steps to purchasing digital media. Different variables must be taken into account:

  • What is the best fit for your brand?
  • Where is your audience?
  • What is the best channel or tactic to strengthen the concrete strategy you have already defined?

Would you know where to start? The following points that we will cover are the three main elements to buying digital media that you should keep in mind.

1. Get to Know Your Audience

target marketing

Every digital marketing campaign is unique, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, goals and target audience. For this reason, it’s very important to know your brand’s audience well, in order to be able to execute each of the elements of a successful digital media buy. And, above all, to do it in a way that helps to grow your business.

Knowing your users will help you discover the media they consume. To achieve this, consider the following factors:

A. Identify your target audience

Who are you trying to reach? Who is your target audience? Create a profile that reflects the user you are trying to reach and impact. The main ‘consumer persona’ of your brand.

Recognizing and building a profile of your potential audience is basic. And, of course, it implies the identification of the demographic profiles, income, Internet browsing habits and overall digital behavior of your users.

It is important that you know the behavior of the audience you are going to target. It is one of the keys to building a better digital media strategy. Otherwise, you run the risk of your investment being unsuccessful.

B. Know your ecosystem

Once you’ve identified your target audience and have studied what profile you are looking for, the location you need to focus on, as well as knowing which audience will best respond to your product, then it is time for you to understand your ecosystem.

This means that you have to go beyond mere profile data. For example, if you need to buy advertising space for car insurance, you can target younger car users living in large metropolitan areas. For that you may be interested in evaluating elements such as the following:

  • Are low-end or high-end car models more attractive?
  • Perhaps driving classes have the most demand?
  • What about driving schools?
  • Or, perhaps, users prefer to find car accessories?

If you discover the interests of your target audience, you will probably also find brands that you have never considered competition before. But they really are. This process is part of the “out of the box” thinking, vital to defining the key elements to buying digital media, and in this case, identifying your real competition.

Having as much information as possible about the competition will help you explore your own elements to buying digital media. That way you’ll know what works best for your audience. What happens to be your potential audience. To analyze your competition, you can start with the following questions:

  • Creative designs and ad types:
  • What do the the banners and landing pages of your competition look like?
  • Does the competition use a specific color scheme that works better than another?
  • Are their designs clean and clear or are they elaborate?
  • What types of ads and specs seem to work best for competing brands?
  • Do they adhere to their own brand image or do they try to adapt to the publication’s?
  • Offerings: What type of calls to action (CTAs) do they use?
  • Do your competitors provide discounts or free products?
  • How do they describe their offers?
  • Website: What types of websites does your competition use to reach its target audience? Following the above example, they could focus on writing blogs about high-end cars or about tricks for car care, for example.
  • On the prevailing website for your competition, where do they publish their ads?
  • Do they run their own ads or are there mediating agencies that complement this process?

Once you have a deep enough understanding of your audience’s ecosystem and competition, you’ll be closer to optimizing the elements of your media buying strategy

2. Creativity and Diversity of the Digital Advertising Ecosystem

The second key to effective digital media buying is to take into account the diversity of the digital advertising ecosystem and not focus all of your resources on the same channel.

There’s a huge variety of digital platforms on which you can advertise. From email to social media, radio, television, influencers … Why limit yourself to only advertising?

Your goal should be to spot the platforms with the best rates and preferred locations of your audience. Only in this way will you increase the positive results of the investment you make.

Types of digital media:

One of the key elements to building a cohesive digital media buying strategy is to understand the different tactics within Earned, Owned and Paid Media.
paid earned owned

  • Paid Media. Media in which you have to invest a certain amount of money to achieve your goals. It would be the closest example to traditional advertising in mass media, but now refers to digital platforms. From the social media platforms themselves to digital advertising banners, there is a wide variety of formats included the paid media category.
  • Owned Media. Media that is owned by your brand. These are the channels through which you communicate with your viewers, users or subscribers. The company has the power and the exclusivity to publish on those channels.
  • Earned Media. It refers to the recognition you get in certain spaces after a job well done. The media wins are the most complicated to earn but are the ones that give the best long-term results.

The use of each type of digital media offers different benefits. Therefore, a good choice of channels in which to interact with your users is key.

3. Choose an Appropriate Media Buying Solution 

The third key element to buying digital media is to have a tool that allows you to control all the elements of the process. The purchase of digital media would be impossible without taking advantage of the potential of advertising platforms such as Digilant.

Campaign optimization is an ongoing process. And, therefore, the fact that something works once does not mean that it will always work. That is why it is fundamental to take care of all the factors that are dependent on you. Some of the most important factors are:

Creative message.

Adequate budget.

There are several ways to fix it. From the percentage of net sales to what you can afford.

Measure everything.

Make sure you have developed processes that allow you to identify what type of advertising medium and channels are generating the best results.

Partnering with a suitable platform is the main element to the digital media purchasing process. Obviously, it must be accompanied by the two previous ones. If you do not know who you are targeting, it will be difficult for you to have an impact. And if you do not know the different types of media, it will be difficult to take advantage of the choices available. But a poor choice of a programmatic platform can reduce the effectiveness of your overall campaign strategy.

Digilant can help you with a managed service or self-service programmatic platform solution. Allowing in both cases to handle digital advertising campaigns using real-time bidding (RTB) across all channels.

Digilant also offers multiple easy-to-use automation and data analysis tools. With them you can focus on managing the key factors that affect your campaigns. Do you want to implement these 3 elements to successful media buying?

How to Hire a Digital Media Buying Agency

Hiring the right digital media agency is one of the most essential tasks for any brand that wants to effectively reach its target audiences. The digital ecosystem has radically transformed the work of media agencies. However, its main function has remained the same: having a brand message reach the right audience, at the right place and time, and at the lowest possible cost for the advertiser.

Until a few years ago, the main media outlets were newspapers, television, radio or outdoor advertising media. In spite of the great variety of available means, the truth is that the work of a media agency was simpler.

As seen in the image below, the process of buying advertising space began in the compilation of a series of data that the agency itself interpreted and executed channel by channel.

buying ad space

Changes in the media purchase model

The transformation of the media buying ecosystem has brought some changes that should be taken into account:

  • The emergence of the Internet has lead to significant audience fragmentation in each and every one of the digital channels. And all this boosted by the irruption of mobile devices. It is becoming increasingly true that : anyone who writes a blog, creates a radio or television station, is a digital medium. Because although the reach of each of individual channels very small, the sum of all of them is a very sizeable amount. That is why the long tail of digital media is one of the main headaches of media agencies. And the way to solve it is one of the keys to take into account when hiring a digital media agency.
  • The evolution of advertising technology has profoundly changed much of the media buying process.
  • In the past, marketing managers and agencies could buy inventory directly from the publishers. A purchase decision that in many cases was based on the content. Depending on the target you would like to impact, you should choose a specific medium. However, the emergence of technologies such as DSPs, DMPs or SSPs have not only solved some of the inefficiencies of the traditional media buying process, but also, has made the process faster and easier to identify the target and the right moment to impact it.
  • The generation and grouping of data from a variety of sources makes it possible to achieve greater target identification. The technology makes a huge volume of data available to all the actors of the ecosystem, as well as the possibility of extracting value from their combination. Thus, it can impact a very specific type of user. Taking into account not only its demographic aspects but also its digital behavior.

Traditional Media Buying Vs. Programmatic Buying

The concept of a media agency as a mere buyer of advertising space has disappeared, as technology has been further integrated into the buying process. The previous infographic shows the main differences between the traditional media purchase and the programmatic purchase.
Highlights include:

  1. The purchase of ads changes from manual to fully automated,thanks to powerful software that allows Real Time Bidding (RTB), in milliseconds.
  2. It goes from a process that involves several people to a management in which the technology groups the data in a common dashboard.
  3. Price stops being a matter of agencies and publishers to being set up through real-time bidding. It allows you to buy and sell inventory in real time based on possible impressions.
  4. Measurement goes from being a tedious and complicated task to be generated via automated reporting. That, in addition, allows generating more knowledge through the application of several filters to the data.
  5. Traditionally, the only way to optimize the campaigns was to wait and see the results. By contrast, programmatic buying of digital media allows to optimize the campaigns in real time. Basically by the access to the data as it consolidates.
  6. A slow and intensive process in human resources is transformed into something fast and automated, where much fewer human errors are made.

Keys to hiring a digital media agency

Having established this background, hiring a digital media agency has become essential. It is essential if the agency does not have the technological means, or if it lacks the necessary knowledge, or if it does not have access to the long tail inventory.

Having access to a media agency that buys ad space is no longer enough to draw interest. The most compelling  thing is that this agency focuses on data analysis and technology to optimize any campaign in real time. This is important when deciding  between  digital media agencies to hire.

To avoid falling into errors, there are a number of keys that you must master:

1.Appropriate Technology

Technology is a pivotal piece of the puzzle. If a digital media agency does not have the appropriate technology, it can’t compete with the market.

The process of buying media with agreements between the publisher and the advertiser is no longer useful. It is now essential to have a DSP to automate the access to an almost unlimited inventory, while leveraging algorithms to define audience segments appropriate to each campaign.

A DSP is the technology that allows the ad to reach a higher quality audience, thanks to its capability to cross users’ data with auctions’ data. This helps optimize campaigns in real time. Hence the importance it has when it comes to hiring a digital media agency. So it is very important to opt for partners like Digilant.

2. Access to unlimited inventory

One of the tasks of a DSP is to centralize media buying services, and to do so in real time. This automation allows you to integrate data from both your own sources and from other suppliers, as well as advertiser data.

This not only makes decision-making more accurate (fundamentally because much more information is available and more segmented), but even more important it allows access to an almost unlimited inventory. In the case of the traditional media purchase the access to inventory depended on the ability to negotiate with the publishers one by one.

3. Creativity

However, using programmatic buying does not imply letting go of creativity. Quite the contrary, when hiring a digital media agency you must assess that the agency can generate creative strategies. Only doing so, it will be possible to make decisions with a return:

  • Where you need to communicate the brand to your users.
  • What message to send.

4. Complete reports in real time

A professional reporting dashboard makes it possible to explore and interact with thousands of data points, and what it is even more interesting, in real time. This is another essential aspect in deciding why to hire a digital media agency or another.

A digital media agency should be able to offer you aggregate metrics as well as trends for specific time periods. Reports that give you information about your audience, that have been extracted from First, Second and Third Party Data.

This aspect is fundamental since these reports are used for the timely optimization of each campaign, which will make you achieve a greater return on your investment.

5. Support

One of the problems with automation is that some advertisers need to learn how to work with certain tools. Knowing what a DSP is and how it works is not enough. It is important to know how to use it.

Hence before hiring a digital media agency is necessary to study in depth the support it offers. It is not only important the explanations they offer, but you should also consider the contact channels that are being used to offer that support: webinars, chat system, phone, etc.  as well as the language. Sometimes incorporating technology involves mastering terminology that you may not know in your language.

In this regard, Digilant University, offers programmatic knowledge relevant to media agencies and brands.
 
6. Price

Is there any company that does not take this variable into account? It is a  mistake to only consider this factor when deciding the agency you are going to hire. However,  this list of aspects to consider, the fact that it is more or less expensive is important, especially if it is accompanied with different functionalities.

7. Certifications

One of the ways to increase the confidence of other companies is to demonstrate expertise. Having professional certifications is another aspect to take into account. For example, when it comes to buying digital media, the QAG Quality standard from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a certification confirming the agency’s commitment to providing advertisers with high-quality, transparent and reliable advertising placements is key.

Something only within the reach of a few companies among which, of course includes Digilant. Do you want to know more about our Programmatic solutions?

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