Pursuing customers across devices often leads to more clicks from the same customers throughout the buying process but not always to higher conversions – particularly where they shop to find specific benefits and price levels. This can lead to a higher marketing spend without increased sales. The benefits of using Programmatic Media Buying correctly is something I’d like to discuss more broadly before we launch the programmatic media buying course in Q3. This is the scoop:

1. Use programmatic to access inventory outside the GDN: Google and Facebook are the two biggest media owners globally, but there are 8 others that can give you access to really high levels of traffic, often with a higher validity rate (due to less bot traffic)
2. Understand the psychology of bid adjustments: Google teaches practitioners in a way that benefits Google – not their employers. To illustrate this, I will share with you my criteria for placing a bid. We believe that where inventory poses a higher chance of conversion, that it qualifies the industry to receive (1) “A bid” and where this is not the case, the inventory receives (2) “No bid”. Google teaches you that it should be (1) “A much higher bid” and (2) “A bid”.  This resulted in a 400% increase in CPC’s on many keywords and a situation where products with lower values can no longer bid to be in the market. Thinking long term, this is not sustainable to Google either.
3. Avoid agency solutions that makes it easy with high charges: Programmatic media buying should be done in a transparent way. You’d like to use an ad server that provides maximum reach and transparency on pricing. Yes, sometings using DFP or equivalent solutions may need a bit of training – but you can save significantly by taking direct control of this.
4. Huge opportunities await but fraud is by now means resolved: As discussed here, Ad fraud is still a very serious problem. We are processing large refunds for customers on a quarterly basis due to this. Don’t think that it is any easier with programmatic, because the underlying causes, including where ad snippets are placed on mobile screens, are still fundamentally the same. So receiving a rebate of 20 to 35% of your quaterly ad spend is currently one way to increase the efficiency of your budget and lower acquisition costs.

Please reach out on the Linkedin forum and let me know what you’d love to see on the next programmatic course, out in Q3.