Programmatic Advertising: What Is It? How Does It Work?

You may have heard that programmatic advertising is revolutionizing the media landscape, or that it’s changing the face of online ad buying…but what is it? Is this just another shiny new toy?

In plain English, programmatic ad placement utilizes software to automate the traditional media buying process of human negotiation and manual insertions orders. The technology and software platforms enable advertisers to define and set parameters around their budget, goals, audience and behavioral targets. Using these parameters, the platform adjusts to variables and optimizes placements and performance.

The software is considering variables such as which version of creative, what channels, which devices and at what time of day is performing best. All the while, optimizing the campaign for these variables in real time!

OK great, but why does this matter for food brands?

This amount of data is far beyond the ability of humans and spreadsheets; software makes digital advertising efficient. Programmatic technologies can deliver ads to consumers while they are in the right frame of mind, in an exact location and on a specific device. By delivering relevant ads, every impression is more impactful and every dollar spent is more efficient.

For food brands, this presents an immense opportunity to reach consumers in-store, on their mobile devices, who are likely to purchase, and with creative that has been optimized to resonate with their interests. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Want to get started? Here are a few platforms with affordable and scaleable solutions for small and medium size business:

  1. Choozle – very affordable platform, intuitive UI and expansive data sets from top providers. I’ve had excellent experience with their customer support team.
  2. StackAdapt – great for custom audience building.

For more articles by Christian Betlyon, go to the blog page.

This article was originally published on the Allebach Communications Food Marketing Insights Blog.