Programmatic: An opportunity not to be missed

While everyone who works in Ad Tech waits for the dust to settle after Google’s latest cookie announcements, we must not forget how far we have come in the last 25 years or so (give or take).

Given the current nature of debate in the privacy landscape, it is easy to overlook just how powerful buying our media through programmatic really is.  It can do wonders for brands that are willing to get creative with it in order to find clever and engaging ways to reach their target audiences.

Reaching new audiences

The actual mechanics behind buying media programmatically has brought us so many new opportunities. For example, with more traditional broadcast media channels becoming programmatically enabled smaller advertisers and their agencies now have access to play with the ‘big kids’ in the much-dominated broadcast channel ‘playground’. With audiences consuming media in ways (particularly over the past 12 months) they simply haven’t done in the past, it presents an opportunity not to be missed for savvy marketers. Programmatic enables you to reach your audience and new audiences in new ways.

Go where your audience takes you…

The boom in people streaming content through their smart TVs presents an opportunity for brands and marketers to reach their audience in TV environments where perhaps the barriers for entry were too high when looking at traditional buying methods. If you take a look at Roku (a major US Ad Based video on demand platform), their ad revenue grew by 32% in Q2 of 2020 according to e-marketer. Audio too has seen a spike, with US podcast advertising revenues nearing $1 billion in 2020 (IAB) as audio buying becomes a standard part of many media plans.

The last twelve months have taught us many things; one, in particular, is the importance of being agile. Outdoor advertising specifically, shows how quickly your media strategy may need to change.  Programmatic Outdoor allows brands to use targeting to find their audience in creative ways. It is likely their audience is in areas brands simply haven’t been present in before. For example, trying to hit a C-suite audience by targeting Canary Wharf for the last twelve months probably was not the best targeting strategy. Advertisers benefit from the flexibility that comes with programmatic-based buying. A brand can swap out creative incredibly quickly, which has a huge benefit, especially in a world where today’s brand message might not make sense tomorrow.

And now, back to checking what Google has said in the last few minutes...