Evaluating Programmatic Marketing Companies: Finding the Right Partner

After researching and learning more about the benefits of programmatic digital advertising, you’ve decided it is time to incorporate programmatic advertising into your digital advertising playbook. That’s great! However, you also know that you don’t have the internal bandwidth to run and optimize programmatic campaigns across the multitude of channels available: display, video, native, digital audio, CTV & OTT, mobile, and DOOH. This means that it is time to find a programmatic marketing partner.

In the digital advertising world, there is no shortage of programmatic advertising companies to choose from, which can make narrowing down which partner is the best fit more difficult. It’s essential that when speaking with these potential programmatic marketing companies, you can look past the big promises and get down to the details that will most directly impact your digital advertising goals.

Below we’ve outlined five considerations that you should keep top of mind when evaluating programmatic marketing companies.

Know what you are looking for in a programmatic marketing company.

Just because a prospective partner touts all the latest and greatest bells and whistles doesn’t mean they are the best fit for you. Before you speak with any programmatic advertising companies, ensure your organization is aligned with your goals in investing in programmatic advertising. Having a plan in place before speaking with these companies will better direct the conversations and allow you to more easily weed out companies that won’t help support your specific goals.

Inquire about targeting tactics they will use to reach your audience.

After all, you have decided to invest in programmatic digital advertising to better reach and engage your specific audience. Posing this question at the beginning of meetings will provide insight into a variety of areas of the potential partner. What data providers do you use? Liveramp? Comscore? PushSpring? Oracle? What targeting tactics will you implement? Do you use any laying techniques, and what experience do you have using them in other campaigns? The combination of these answers will suggest how well they will be able to reach your target audience.

Learn more about how layering different data providers along with targeting tactics can help maximize your audience reach in our CPG case study targeting millennial moms.

Brand safety measures cannot be overlooked.

As you were researching programmatic digital advertising, you most likely read about the top concern most advertisers have with this form of advertising: brand safety and ad fraud prevention. As the issue remains at the forefront of the industry, all programmatic marketing companies should have a resolute answer to this question.

So, as you meet with different prospects, note their answers, and how confident they seem in their procedures. If their answer seems wavering, continue the conversation by asking how they vet their partners if they ensure that all data providers, DSPs, and any other organizations they work with also use similar ad fraud fighting practices. If a programmatic provider is willing to partner with an organization that doesn’t prioritize brand safety, they probably aren’t the best fit for your brand to choose as a partner.

Don’t hold back your optimization expectations.

The primary appeal of programmatic digital advertising is that it happens in real-time, and so, optimizations also occur in the same way. Rather than waiting for a campaign to run its course and analysis after the fact, programmatic allows advertisers to optimize towards what is working well and shift budget and efforts away from what is not. There is a significant differentiator point in programmatic advertising companies you can uncover when discussing optimization plans with them.

Yes, realistically, a programmatic provider can press play on your campaign, let the technology take over, and the campaign will run smoothly. However, for all the technology and AI that the industry has, nothing will ever be more beneficial than the human element.

The right programmatic partner combines machine learning with human expertise. Campaign analysts should be looking into your campaigns, analyzing the data, and optimizing the campaigns in conjunction with the machine learning metrics. Ask prospective programmatic marketing companies how often they (they being actual humans, not just a machine) will manually optimize your camping? Will optimization analysis notes be shared weekly? Monthly?

Just like in step one of outlining your overall programmatic goals, go into these meetings with expectations for these answers. You should not settle for a programmatic partner that won’t work toward helping you reach (and hopefully exceed) your goals.

What makes them different from other programmatic marketing companies?

There is no perfect answer to this question (and if the response seems perfect, it might be too good to be true). Asking this question should give you a better taste of the company – what they value most, their area of expertise, or what unique technology they have to offer.

Maybe they have a specific team of experts who will significantly improve your digital audio goals. Maybe their analytics features go above and beyond any other programmatic marketing companies. Perhaps their pricing structure aligns with the needs of your organization. This is an excellent part of the conversation to evaluate if the programmatic marketing partner will align and prioritize your goals.

What makes Digilant different from other programmatic marketing companies?

Digilant’s team is made up of data analysts, biddable-media planners & strategists, platform experts, and tech specialists who are passionate about data and understand what a digital strategy requires: radical transparency, agility,  and flexibility. We are not ones to sit idle, playing catch up if a problem arrives; instead, our platform experts consistently monitor campaigns to ensure that the best possible targeting options are in play and KPIs are reached.

We understand that many brands face increasingly crowded categories. Reaching the right audience at the right time while staying on budget and maximizing ROI is more important than ever before. This is no easy task to accomplish. But, with a suite of best-in-class technology and data providers matched with best-in-class client service, Digilant is poised to work alongside our client every step of the way to ensure a winning digital media strategy.

Interested in learning more about how Digilant can transform your digital advertising campaigns? Let’s talk.