Is Data To Programmatic Like a Drummer To A Rock Band?

Pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing won’t get the same results with­out data. Each busi­ness has unique sets of data that will dri­ve engage­ment and con­ver­sions.

Pete Kluge By Pete Kluge from Adobe. Join the discussion » 0 comments

The shift to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing for dis­play and oth­er chan­nels is hap­pen­ing at a fast pace. In the U.S. this year, pro­gram­mat­ic is expect­ed to rep­re­sent more than 60 per­cent of all dis­play trans­ac­tions. Con­nect­ing data and audi­ences that have exist­ed in silos across an advertiser’s busi­ness to their ad buy­ing tech­nol­o­gy is the future of pro­gram­mat­ic.


One day I was lis­ten­ing to music while work­ing on a pre­sen­ta­tion and a song came on that I imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized by its drum­beat. It start­ed with a beat dri­ven by the bass, snare drum, and cym­bal before going into a bluesy gui­tar riff fol­lowed by scratchy high-pitched rock vocals; the song was “Rock and Roll” by Led Zep­pelin.

At the time I was work­ing on a pre­sen­ta­tion on pro­gram­mat­ic, so it became clear to me that just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band, data pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing. And the rock band can be used as a good anal­o­gy to rep­re­sent the diverse ele­ments of pro­gram­mat­ic that are enhanced by data.

The drum­mer is cen­tral to and pow­ers the rock band like data is cen­tral to and pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing.

Programmatic rock band

Data Is Fueling The Growth In Programmatic

If you lis­ten to the great­est rock songs of all time, the drum parts are often unique and dis­tinc­tive. The songs would­n’t be the same with­out the drummer’s unique style. “Rock and Roll” by Led Zep­pelin would­n’t be the same song with a dif­fer­ent drum­mer or dif­fer­ent drum part.

The same is true about data – pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing won’t get the same results with­out data. Each busi­ness has its own unique sets of data that dri­ves its busi­ness, often locat­ed in pock­ets through­out the busi­ness.

The bet­ter a busi­ness can har­ness and link their dis­parate data sets to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing, the bet­ter their results will be. An adver­tis­er may be able to deliv­er ads, but they won’t get the full ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic in terms of per­for­mance and expe­ri­ences with­out con­nect­ing it to their valu­able data assets.

Mar­keters have more data avail­able to them now than ever before. They have access to mas­sive amounts of audi­ence data – every­thing from first-par­ty online web­site vis­i­tor data to offline CRM data, sec­ond-par­ty part­ner data, and third-par­ty con­sumer and busi­ness data. Pro­gram­mat­ic enables an adver­tis­er to apply that data to dri­ve bet­ter per­for­mance for their dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

Data is fuel­ing the growth in pro­gram­mat­ic. Glob­al pro­gram­mat­ic ad spend was over $20 bil­lion in 2014 and it is expect­ed to more than dou­ble to $53 bil­lion in 2018, accord­ing to Magna Glob­al.

Data pow­ers four key char­ac­ter­is­tics and ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic. Data:

  • Enables an adver­tis­er to build and reach high val­ue audi­ences.
  • Fuels per­for­mance opti­miza­tions.
  • Pow­ers per­son­al­ized dynam­ic expe­ri­ences.
  • Dri­ves auto­mat­ed ad buy­ing deci­sions across chan­nels and devices.

Audiences

Retargeting Audiences

Our singer gets a lot of attention.

If you know any rock singers, you may find that some­times their egos are a lit­tle inflat­ed. The singer is out in front of the band and loves get­ting all the atten­tion; it’s like some of our favorite adver­tis­ing audi­ences.

For dis­play adver­tis­ers, one of our favorite audi­ences is the retar­get­ing “aban­don­ers” seg­ment. Whether it’s a retail shop­ping cart aban­don­er, a trav­el­er leav­ing the book­ing process after search­ing for a flight, or a finan­cial ser­vices prospect aban­don­ing a cred­it appli­ca­tion – if a site vis­i­tor doesn’t con­vert right away, adver­tis­ers want you back for a sec­ond chance to dri­ve a con­ver­sion. And it works great.

Adver­tis­ers love these audi­ences. They rep­re­sent a high oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­vert based on the intent they have shown through their actions and we give them a lot of our atten­tion.

Like our singer who wouldn’t be able to do much with­out the rest of his band, adver­tis­ing audi­ences by them­selves are not much with­out data. Audi­ences need data – lots of data.

When adver­tis­ers find high per­form­ing audi­ences like retar­get­ing audi­ences, there are nev­er enough of them, and they want to iden­ti­fy and build more audi­ences like them. Data and audi­ence man­age­ment can help an adver­tis­er to:

  • Iden­ti­fy and build high val­ue audi­ences: Hav­ing access to more data like gran­u­lar first-par­ty data (site ana­lyt­ics, offline CRM data) enables an adver­tis­er to find more high-val­ue audi­ences.
  • Increase the size of their address­able audi­ences: Once we’ve iden­ti­fied high val­ue audi­ences, we want to find more users that look like that audi­ence. Data helps an adver­tis­er to increase the address­able audi­ences. An adver­tis­er can find more users that look like their best per­form­ing audi­ences using third-par­ty data (con­sumer demo­graph­ics and busi­ness attrib­ut­es) or cre­at­ing look-alike mod­els.
  • Acti­vate audi­ences across chan­nels: Pro­gram­mat­ic enables an adver­tis­er to acti­vate their high-val­ue audi­ences across chan­nels to dri­ve actions and deliv­er inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.

Optimizations

Display Optimization Algorithms

Our guitar player is flashy and likes to show off.

How many times have you heard your dis­play ven­dor say they have the best per­for­mance and opti­miza­tion algo­rithms in the indus­try?

We, in the indus­try, love to brag about our fan­cy algo­rithms and per­for­mance. Like a gui­tar play­er who needs his band and drum­mer to tru­ly shine, the opti­miza­tion algos need data and algos are only as good as the data you put into them.

Pro­gram­mat­ic dis­play algo­rithms rely on data to opti­mize to the advertiser’s objec­tives. Data dri­ves the ad-buy­ing bid deci­sion and bud­get allo­ca­tion to best meet the advertiser’s objec­tives.

For demand-side plat­forms (DSPs), real-time bid deci­sion­ing hap­pens at the user-impres­sion lev­el.

The DSP eval­u­ates all avail­able data for a user impres­sion in real-time (or mil­lisec­onds) to deter­mine the bid amount. It con­sid­ers data sent by the ad exchange along with the bid request (site, cat­e­go­ry), adver­tis­er audi­ence data (actions on site, prod­ucts viewed, pages vis­it­ed) and oth­er data dimen­sions (like time of day, loca­tion, and device).

The pro­gram­mat­ic plat­form uses data to eval­u­ate and rec­om­mend media mix and bud­get allo­ca­tion across cam­paigns and chan­nels to opti­mize for the advertiser’s objec­tive. Dynamic Experiences

Dynamic Creative Experiences

Our keyboard player fills out the sound of the band with chords and exotic sounds.

With pro­gram­mat­ic, we have the abil­i­ty to reach the same audi­ence across chan­nels and devices so we can deliv­er per­son­al­ized cre­ative expe­ri­ences across the user jour­ney.

For exam­ple, we can deliv­er a per­son­al­ized, rel­e­vant, and con­sis­tent cre­ative expe­ri­ence in a dis­play ad, on a web­site, in a social ad and in a search ad – all pow­ered by data and pro­gram­mat­ic. This is made pos­si­ble by data and audi­ence seg­men­ta­tion, and the abil­i­ty to reach those audi­ences across chan­nels through a pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form.

Dynam­ic Cre­ative Opti­miza­tion (DCO) takes dis­play per­son­al­iza­tion to anoth­er lev­el by opti­miz­ing dis­play ad con­tent in real time at a gran­u­lar lev­el based on the view­er and audi­ence. Automated Buying

Automated Ad Buying

Our bass player is tight with the drummer and provides a solid foundation for the band.

A core capa­bil­i­ty of a pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form is the abil­i­ty to buy and opti­mize ads across chan­nels and devices (dis­play, social, search, mobile, video) in an auto­mat­ed fash­ion with less fric­tion and human inter­ac­tion.

Pro­gram­mat­ic pro­vides effi­cien­cies such as audi­ence buy­ing across inven­to­ry sources and chan­nels with con­trols like fre­quen­cy cap­ping and bud­get plan­ning, and trans­paren­cy into inven­to­ry sources and media costs. The pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing plat­form pro­vides the foun­da­tion for pro­gram­mat­ic.

Data pow­ers the key char­ac­ter­is­tics and ben­e­fits of pro­gram­mat­ic just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band.

Data Powers

Connecting Data & Audiences Is Driving The Future Of Programmatic

Led Zep­pelin would­n’t be the same band with­out a drum­mer or with­out John Bon­ham’s unique and dis­tinc­tive drum sound and style. Data pow­ers pro­gram­mat­ic just like a drum­mer pow­ers a rock band. Each busi­ness has unique and valu­able data that can be used to iden­ti­fy high-val­ue audi­ences and reach them via pro­gram­mat­ic and across their dig­i­tal jour­ney to dri­ve engage­ment and con­ver­sions.


Are you har­ness­ing and link­ing your dis­parate data sets to pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing?

Pete Kluge

Written by Pete Kluge

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Adobe

As senior product marketing manager for Adobe Media Optimizer, Pete Kluge is focused on display and programmatic advertising solutions. Before Adobe, Pete worked at Microsoft and Yahoo on retargeting and display advertising ad products and owned a direct marketing services and consulting business.

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