Is programmatic advertising ready for its closeup? Programmatic—broadly defined as advertising that is transacted or fulfilled via automation—now makes up for over 90% of US digital display spending, and it is quickly extending into other channels like digital out-of-home and linear TV.
While programmatic has matured a great deal in the decade and a half since its debut, it has also become increasingly complex. New buying and bidding methods, new ways to target and ensure inventory quality, and new measurement and attribution solutions have all come onto the scene to form a highly fragmented landscape. Add to that the growing importance of privacy, mounting government scrutiny, the fluctuating future of identity, and brands and agencies that are seeking more control over their media buying and adtech stack, and programmatic is starting to look an awful lot like any other tumultuous teenager.
Tune in to this webinar to hear Evelyn Mitchell, eMarketer analyst at Insider Intelligence, and host Ryan Manchee assess the current state of programmatic and explore its place in the future of digital advertising.
You need to get started using programmatic buying tools, but you’ve never done it before, and you don’t know where to begin. Join the club. We get it. It’s the same reason we haven’t learned to cook for ourselves yet.
Here’s the good news: We’ve got experts at Basis Technologies who know the ins and outs of programmatic advertising. All you have to do is ask the right questions. Lucky for you, we’ve asked the basic questions and we’ve come equipped with answers (and, lucky for us, everyone assures us there is no such thing as a dumb question).
To start: Programmatic is a very broad term. Simply put, it’s technology that automates digital media buying. This can include automating anything from rate negotiation and campaign set up to optimizations and actualizations. One of the primary buying tools you have at your disposal is a DSP.
A demand side platform (DSP) is an automated ad buying platform, where advertisers and agencies go to purchase digital ad inventory. Examples of ad inventory include banner ads on websites, mobile ads on apps and the mobile web, and in-stream video. DSPs are integrated into multiple ad exchanges.
Nope, it’s not the same thing, but it is similar in concept. Supply-side platforms, or sell-side platforms (SSPs), facilitate the sale of publisher inventory through an ad exchange. SSPs offer services such as minimum bid requirements in order for the publisher to maximize how much their ad space sells for. The difference is that DSPs are for marketers and SSPs are for publishers. SSPs (like DSPs) are plugged into multiple ad exchanges.
Think of the ad exchange as the "go-between" in the automated buying world. An ad exchange is a digital marketplace that enables advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space via real-time bidding (RTB). Meaning the ad exchange announces each impression—with the inventory flowing through DSPs and SSPs—in real time and asks buyers if they are interested in buying said impression and at which price.
In order to understand why DSPs matter, it’s important to remember where the need came from and how the ad industry operated before automated buying. Traditionally, if you were a media buyer at an ad agency, the buying process was facilitated through human beings—it was you (the advertisers), the publishers (website where ad will appear), an audience (the viewer of the ad), and a bunch of spreadsheets and emails going back and forth negotiating prices. This process was complicated, time-consuming, and often error-prone. DSPs allow advertisers and agencies to buy across a lot of sites at the same time—and all of this is done instantly and efficiently, usually before the webpage loads.
DSPs offer a host of other benefits as well, including audience targeting capabilities, brand safety and fraud prevention tools, a real-time view of campaign performance, optimizations toward a goal, multi-tactic approaches, and flexible budget shifting.
There are many DSPs in the programmatic world to choose from. Choosing the right DSP for you depends on a number of factors, like what type of data you need (first-party or third-party) and how many ad exchanges the DSP is plugged into, because that can affect reach. DSPs like Basis DSP give you access to over 40 billion daily impressions across all devices and channels. Other things to consider include cost, how much training and hands-on support you prefer, and ease of use—many DSPs have multiple, clunky or confusing user interfaces, which require a lot of education.
Some DSPs come with a full team of experts, offering you everything from full-service to self-service and everything in between. With Basis DSP, you’ll start with a three-month platform training program, offering you an overview of programmatic, a walk-through of the interface, and best practices for campaign creation and optimization. Ongoing support is available in the form of a customer success manager and resources to keep you informed—like new feature webinars, best practice guides, and new quarterly business reviews.
What’s new in the realms of paid search and social media? Basis’ Senior Vice President of Paid Search and Social compiles all the latest news, trends, and resources each month for easy access.
eMarketer covers key developments across major social networks in the last quarter, and analyzes what they mean for marketers and advertisers.
Launching in nine countries with more to come soon, Snapchat's new USD$3.99 per month service contains “a collection of exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features” for paying users. This is an interesting update to keep an eye on, as many other social networks continue to consider how paid subscription models might fit into their futures.
According to a recent announcement, Google is testing new glasses that include “in-lens displays, microphones, and cameras” that are designed to help fulfill everyday needs such as translating menus or finding directions to a nearby store. Unlike Snapchat Spectacles, these are not intended to capture photos or videos—Google is instead exploring utilities like translation, transcription and navigation.
eMarketer covers the latest news in Meta’s metaverse plans, including their all-in approach at Cannes and how growth in the global VR headset market is setting them up for the future.
Now available in over 99.5% of households in the US, with more than 100 channels available, its rising popularity means YouTube continues to claim market share of overall entertainment time. Linked in this article are some additional insights on YouTube viewership that help illustrate its popularity.
Shopify merchants will now be able to link stores and showcase product inventory in live streams, videos, and in a new YouTube channel “Store” tab. Users in the US, Brazil, and India will also see a new Shopping experience in the “Explore” tab, making it easier for consumers to find products that appeal to them.
New Pinterest enhancements include an updated API for shopping feeds, the ability to make product pins shoppable, shop tabs on profiles, and more. With the number of users engaging with shopping surfaces on Pinterest growing 215% year over year, eMarketer suspects these are just the first of many announcements around capabilities in this area to come.
Twitter tapped Publicis to run a study of almost 10,000 users across six platforms in several countries to determine whether talking about brands and products actually powers sales. They found that 92% of people seek out comments about brands or products, and 68% say their impression of a brand is changed because of conversations they read on social platforms.
A recent study by Ipsos shows how TikTok users turn to Live streaming as a way to engage with brands and content sponsors. The study includes key findings marketers considering TikTok Live should be aware of—especially when driving shopping behavior is the main goal.
Certainly not all users prefer this route, but Google recently found that 40% of Gen Z’ers aged 18-24 prefer to search on social platforms—specifically TikTok and Instagram. The place these channels hold in culture, and in recommending personal, topical, and visual content for users to engage with, is potentially bleeding over to influence other search behaviors.
Next month, advertisers will be required to update text and banner ads to include a “Paid For By” designation visible at all times. Election Ads may also be eligible to run YouTube Audio ads, if pre-approved.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 7/15/22 - 7/21/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
In a market that keeps getting shaken up by current events—think Netflix’s entrance into advertising or the crises unfolding in social media—multi-touch attribution may offer marketers a quicker way to assess and optimize campaign performance. That is, if their data’s in order...
Speaking of things getting shaken up by current events: the 2022 election cycle will be different than any before. To help political marketers keep their wits about them this election cycle, political advertising expert Jackie Etter-Krause breaks down three key trends.
In the past decade, newspaper ad revenue has dropped by an astonishing 50% as advertisers shifted their dollars to the internet. This Q&A explores some of the novel proposals aimed at propping up the news industry—including a “journalism tax” on digital ads.
Is it just us, or have increasing media complexity and data privacy changes from Apple and Google made it harder than ever to understand the consumer journey? MER, or Marketing Efficiency Ratio, may help marketers capture a more holistic picture of how effectively they’re allocating campaign dollars.
After a bit of a false start before COVID-19 hit, DOOH is back, with ad spend expected to rise 34% over the next year. Here, a panel of industry experts weighs in with thoughts on the channel’s benefits and challenges, plus predictions as to how it will develop.
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If you thought midterm ad spending was high in 2018, meet 2022: Campaign ad spend for this year’s midterms blew past $2 billion by July— before many of the primaries had even wrapped—and shows no signs of slowing.
A cocktail of factors, including the Supreme Court’s recent rulings, inflation, presidential popularity ratings, and a chaotic social media landscape, will make this election cycle different than any before.
To help political marketers keep their wits about them in this churning environment, we’ve identified three key trends to be aware of this year. Let’s dig in:
Of the many changes COVID thrust upon the political landscape in 2020, the expansion of mail-in voting and other early voting options is one that’s likely to endure. In 2020, 43% of voters utilized mail-in voting—a more than 105% jump from 2016. And while contactless and early voting options were especially important in pre-vaccine 2020, many who experienced the convenience of avoiding long lines on Election Day have no intention of turning back.
While many restrictive voting laws were enacted in 2021, legislators in a handful of states have worked towards expanding mail-in voting options: Kentucky, for example, has codified mail-in voting, while Nevada and Vermont will now automatically mail out ballots to registered voters before each election.
What does it all mean for political advertisers? Mainly that spending cycles will be longer than in pre-COVID years. That’s not to say there won’t be an election week spending bonanza, but given the number of Americans who are likely to vote early, candidates and causes advertisers will need to spread their dollars out over the weeks (or even months) prior to Election Day to reach early voters. And in the context of inflation and political polarization—which we’ll get to in a moment—political advertisers will need to spend and target efficiently, removing people who have already voted from their targeting lists (don’t worry, we’ll get to that too!)
Political marketer or not, you’re likely familiar with the degree of political division in the U.S. And while it’s become the norm of daily life for many Americans, it’s critical for political advertisers to understand how that polarization is impacting the advertising landscape in order to best prepare for this year’s midterms.
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, in particular, will have far-reaching impacts. We predict this event will cause voters to turn out in higher-than-usual numbers this election cycle, making it even more critical for marketers to spend and market efficiently.
Beyond that, the sweeping legal change itself may impact the advertising industry in unexpected ways. For instance, people seeking information about abortions may choose to use search engines with reputations for privacy, such as DuckDuckGo and Startpage. If this does come to pass, the decrease in traffic on major sites like Google and Bing could have significant impacts on the keywords that marketers choose to/are able to bid on in auctions.
All in all, it’s too soon to tell exactly how the overturning of Roe v. Wade will impact the advertising landscape, but the fact that it will make an impact is hard to refute.
Even more, the issue of mis- and dis-information, particularly around politically polarizing topics, hasn’t subsided since 2020. Brands that have unwittingly placed advertisements on sites that peddle COVID-19 or abortion-related misinformation, for example, have reaped public backlash and wasted spend on placements that did more harm than good for brand reputation.
There’s also a strong case that advertisers actually have a moral responsibility to avoid placing media on sites characterized by mis- and dis-information, as their ad spend is actually funding the spread of that harmful content. And from a revenue perspective, avoiding low-quality sites is just good business: One 2021 report found that 85% of UK consumers surveyed would reduce their purchases of a certain brand if is appeared alongside misinformation.
Pat yourself on the back—you’ve made it to the fun part of the post, where we get to discuss all the ways digital advertising innovations can help candidates and causes spend, target, and place ads more effectively in this rapidly changing landscape.
Traditionally, political spend has picked up after Labor Day, with the most spend happening in the week leading up to Election Day. In 2020, we saw those trends move up by 1 to 2 weeks, depending on each state’s early voting laws. The need to advertise over a longer period of time, coupled with the added pressure of inflation and high demand, means political advertisers should keep efficiency at the forefront of their minds.
Many political advertisers have already caught on to the scale and precision offered by programmatic—in fact, in 2020, it was the most popular buying tactic for U.S. election campaigns. Programmatic delivers what political marketers need: speed in launching campaigns, optimization on the fly, and precise audience reach wherever voters consume media. Programmatic isn’t going anywhere, and the market will become more competitive as more and more campaigns tap into programmatic solutions—so it will grow increasingly important to tap into optimizations such as bid shading, which provides both cost- and time- efficiencies.
Speaking of spending efficiently, this year it will be critical for advertisers to exclude people (or at least attempt to exclude people) who have already voted from their campaigns, since many will vote early. And while you may not technically have to deal with third-party cookie loss until 2023, candidates and causes advertisers can avoid public backlash from privacy-related blunders by leveraging privacy-friendly audience targeting solutions. Plus, learning how to implement them this cycle will only benefit marketers next year, when third-party cookies aren’t an option.
Contextual targeting, which identifies the digital spaces certain groups are most likely to visit based on page-based keywords and topics, is one tried-and-true alternative that avoids user data entirely. Hyperlocal geo-targeting is another powerful automated solution for marketers to have in their toolkits. Traditionally, marketers have had to manually identify the zip codes they want to target for certain State and local legislative districts, then upload that location data into a programmatic platform before utilizing it. A new first-of-its-kind feature in Basis automates the delivery of that voter data, quickening the selection and exemption of districts to target.
Choosing the right partners to get privacy-compliant targeting data from will also be key. For example, Basis DSP has integrations with specialized political data partners like L2, TargetSmart, i360, and DeepRoot, who provide regularly updated political data throughout the election cycle to give users the ability to target easily and efficiently.
Digital advertising also offers solutions to protect candidates and causes from the dangers of placing media alongside misinformation. Basis DSP has partnered with NOBL, an automated solution that uses natural language processing and machine learning to categorize sites as high- or low-quality. When users activate the optimization, Basis automatically blocklists low-quality sites. By utilizing a responsible advertising partner like NOBL, political marketers can tap into the scale offered by programmatic without worrying about their media showing up in unexpected and unsavory places.
Finally, advertisers should branch out into the digital channels that maximize their impact and efficiency this election cycle. Many political marketers are focused on old-school political advertising, but gone are the days of only a handful of cable channels: the fragmentation of linear TV means that it doesn’t offer the same mass-reach that it used to. As such, a well-rounded, multi-channel approach is the best way for political advertisers to reach their audiences in 2022.
Connected TV is catching on big time—in fact, CTV share in programmatic political advertising grew a whopping 280% from 2018 to 2020. And while CTV will come with a higher price tag leading up to Election Day—Basis’ Spring 2020 survey of political marketing organizations showed that eCPMs for CTV averaged 3.5X that of other platforms and devices—political marketers have determined that the emotional impact, targetability, and unskippability of CTV ads make it well worth the investment.
A channel that political advertisers aren’t tapping into, but probably should be? Digital audio. It was barely used in political ads in 2020 (in part due to platform-based limitations), but in 2022 it’s the fastest-growing category in digital advertising as a whole. Political marketers should consider the high-quality audiences offered by audio: long-time podcast listeners who have trusted relationships with hosts, for example, or Spotify—which now allows political ads, by the way—listeners who are completely engaged with audio entertainment as they commute or take care of household chores.
With early voting, political polarization, and a churning digital ad market on the menu, political advertisers will have their hands full this election cycle. Now is the time when turning to trusted advertising partners can make all the difference.
Basis Technologies is home to the largest and longest-term politically focused advertising team in the ad tech space. Our political marketers have done this work for over 16 years, and our tech is constantly improving to meet the specific needs of our political advertising partners.
Curious to learn more? Connect with us!
A new health and wellness company focuses on programmatic, search, and social and achieves a 40% brand lift and 224% increase in website traffic among the health-conscious consumer.
Providing premium all-in-one vitamins for adults and kids, this California-based preventative health and wellness company needed an experienced digital media partner to help them navigate and develop an impactful advertising strategy and campaign to drive their brand launch. The wellness industry faces a double-edged sword: its products have never been more popular, but it is a highly competitive and oversaturated category, making it challenging for new brands to impact market share.
To meet these needs, the brand teamed up with Basis Technologies to leverage their award-winning Media Strategy and Activations team to design and implement a massive two-phased effort to maximize awareness and sales across the audience segments in select markets.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 7/8/22 - 7/14/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
Leave it to Netflix to craft a twist ending: the streaming giant has chosen Microsoft as its technology and sales partner for a new ad-supported service tier. Microsoft isn't as big of a player in the ad space as other suiters like Google and Comcast, but it's also not a direct rival—a factor that may have clinched the deal.
Google is reportedly trying to stave off legislation and litigation related to its dominance within the digital advertising industry with a proposal to split its ad business up into multiple companies...but keeping both new entities under parent company Alphabet. With no real change in ownership, the move seems unlikely to satisfy regulators.
Think the lack of a Presidential election equals a slower campaign ad season? Well, not in 2022! TV, radio and tracked digital advertising spend have already topped $2 billion, fueled by some major dollars in the Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona senatorial races.
Elon Musk may never buy Twitter, but his bid for the company has likely brought lasting damage to the social network’s ad sales department. According to agencies and marketers, ad sales talent has fled the company, hoping to escape the turmoil created by the billionaire’s acquisition offer—which is now in disarray.
Here’s some good news: automated reporting for digital advertising exists, and it exists to make your life easier. This piece breaks down how report automation works and details the way its many benefits can mitigate some of the biggest pain points in digital marketing.
Travel is back! After being hit hard by the pandemic over the past few years, many travel brands are hopping on the podcast bandwagon to communicate with consumers—either by running ads in travel podcasts, or even launching series of their own.
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For brands that want more transparency into campaign performance, agency leaders who are struggling to stay efficient under the burden of massive and disparate data sets, and media buyers who are contemplating yet another job switch to escape manual reporting duties, the very notion of “automated reporting for digital advertising” sounds almost too good to be true. Key word: almost.
But here’s the good news: Automated reporting exists, and it exists to make your life easier. The even better news? You’ve come to exactly the right place to learn what report automation is, how it works, and what its benefits are.
So settle in, make yourself comfortable, and get excited about a world where your team isn’t wasting hours of each work week on manual, error-prone data consolidation and campaign performance report generation tasks.
Automated reporting consolidates performance data across marketing channels such as search, social, and programmatic and uses that data to automatically generate holistic campaign analytics reports.
To best explain how automated advertising reporting works, let’s start by looking at how manual marketing reports are made. After all, the many hidden costs of manual reporting are what spurred the innovation of automated reporting.
Consider the following statistics from a recent survey of 300 CMOs:
Why is manual reporting such a burden for marketing teams? Well, to create reports manually, marketers must collect and verify data sets from multiple sources, identify and isolate the common metrics they’re interested in across those data sets, consolidate the data sets based on those metrics, and manually interpret that unified data before creating charts, graphs, and presentations to communicate their findings to clients.
Sounds...not great, right? Frankly, we’re getting bored just thinking about it. Worse yet, all that manual manipulation of precious campaign data creates numerous opportunities for human error, inconsistencies, and redundancies—all of which add up to low confidence in the reports themselves. Plus, the work involved in creating these reports is tedious, repetitive, and unfulfilling for marketers. It’s the kind of work that, in the context of the Great Resignation and a cutthroat job market, brands and agencies would do well to reduce—if not eliminate.
Automated reporting, by contrast, uses sophisticated technologies to automate the collection, unification, and presentation of campaign data, so marketers can create visually appealing, holistic reports just by telling the tech which metrics and date range they’re interested in.
Automated reporting offers an array of benefits, all of which can add up to major competitive advantages for agencies and brands. Here are five of the biggest pros:
Automation streamlines the collection, consolidation, and presentation of campaign analytics—achieving those tasks in a fraction of the time it would take someone compiling those reports manually. As a result, marketing organizations using automated reporting are more efficient, with more time each week for strategic tasks, networking, ongoing education, or even TikTok (we’re not judging, promise.)
When humans manage the manual collection and consolidation of data, it’s easy to inadvertently copy and paste the wrong field or hit the wrong key—especially because this work is often frustrating and mind-numbingly tedious. Marketing teams can eliminate these kinds of human errors by leaving the collection and consolidation of data to technology.
Data privacy will shape the current and future eras of advertising. In response to consumer demand for data privacy, legislators have passed digital advertising regulations like the EU’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act, which aim to protect consumers from the unethical or unconsented use of their data.
As a result, marketing teams must handle their consumer data with extreme care. If your organization doesn’t collect, store, and use its data in ways that comply with industry regulations, fines and even legal prosecution may follow. While manual reporting can open companies up to costly errors related to data compliance, automated marketing reporting keeps the process clean.
Economic upheaval, supply chain disruption, and global crises have cumulated in a cutthroat environment where consumers are increasingly switching brands, driven by lower prices and/or limited supply. With brand loyalty at stake, brands need frequent, crystal-clear reporting to identify what’s working in their campaigns and what isn’t. Tools like automated marketing reports streamline this process and, for agencies, can improve client communications and relationships.
Finally, in today’s candidate-driven market, the need to retain staff is urgent, but manual reporting is a known pain point for highly skilled marketers who don’t want to spend their time on tedious, repetitive tasks. Providing your team with tools that make their jobs easier and more enjoyable is a productive way to show them you’re looking out for their wellbeing. And if it just so happens to help them work more efficiently? All the better.
Like any opportunity, the brands and agencies that adopt automated reporting early will gain a significant advantage over those who don't, giving them an edge in this highly competitive industry.
But reporting is just the start when it comes to the power of advertising automation. Billing automation and workflow automation, for example, can also provide game-changing efficiencies for brands. To learn more about how automation is poised to transform and improve the marketing industry, check out our guide, Meeting the Moment with Advertising Automation.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 7/1/22 - 7/7/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
The repeal of Roe v. Wade is one of many high-profile events driving people to the internet for vital data. Unfortunately, misinformation is rampant, and access to vetted information is an urgent matter in this and many other cases. Marketers can help ensure brand suitability by advertising ethically and making sure their ad spend isn’t supporting sites that peddle misinformation.
As this Cannes Lions AdWeek panel shows, younger workers expect their employers to embody values that align with their own—a fact that’s forcing marketing departments to “put their money where their mouth is” when it comes to climate change.
Climate change, inflation, war in Europe, and talent shortages: What a time to be alive and marketing (*insert melting face emoji*)! In today’s competitive landscape, brands need every bit of efficiency they can get—and bid shading is one solution that offers just that.
It’s been quite a year for digital advertising regulation! Just this week, European lawmakers approved two new pieces of sweeping digital regulation, paving the way for clashes between regulators and the world’s biggest tech companies over how those rules should be applied.
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