Download Target Key Audiences Across Devices in Real Time

ONE TOUGH QUESTION:
PROGRAMMATIC 2016
Target
Key Audiences
Across Devices
in Real Time
Leveraging data-rich programmatic
marketing optimizes campaigns to help
marketers reach and convert customers
Programmatic ad buying — once considered
to be all about efficiency — has moved
mainstream and is increasingly enabling
marketers to be more targeted at scale. Plus,
programmatic is quickly evolving beyond
banners to video, rich media, and even TV.
Programmatically purchased ads are on a
growth spurt, climbing from half of all dollars
spent on digital ads in 2015 to two-thirds
this year, and are projected to hit nearly
three-quarters next year, according to research
from eMarketer. In dollars, that translates from
$15.8 billion spent on programmatic in 2015 to
$27.5 billion in 2017, a 74% increase.
What’s the first step marketers considering
programmatic should take to not only get
started, but also get the most from the
approach? For marketers already dabbling in
programmatic, what’s one improvement they
can make or step they can take to successfully
advance their efforts? Eleven marketing
thought leaders offer their insights on how
to leverage programmatic to reach — and
motivate — new and existing customers.
–Joann Whitcher
TABLE OF CONTENTS
7 Ryan Phelan, VP, marketing insights,
Adestra
8 Edward Thomas, head of audience,
Skimlinks
14 Michael Bird, GM
and global leader of
sales and marketing
solutions, Dun &
Bradstreet
15 Bill Nagel cofounder
and chief marketing
strategist, Netsertive
4 Lindsay Fordham, director, product
marketing, Rocket Fuel
5 Andrew Eifler, VP, product
management, AppNexus
6Joanna O’Connell, CMO, MediaMath
10 Andrew Fischer, cofounder and CEO,
Choozle
9 Chad Peplinski, SVP, media
acquisitions and operations, Conversant
11 James Smith, EVP, Americas,
Criteo
12 David Staas, president, NinthDecimal
LINDSAY FORDHAM
Director, product marketing, Rocket Fuel
@lindsaylfordham @rocketfuelinc
According to IDC, programmatic TV (pTV) will account for $17.3
billion in ad spend worldwide by 2019 — up from $69 million
in 2014. It’s a large, growing, yet often misunderstood market.
For brand marketers, a first step is to leverage programmatic TV to reach underserved audiences as a complement to
their traditional marketing program. With the ability to reach
audiences with greater precision (or individual households, in
the case of Dish), marketers dial up or down week by week to
balance overall reach and frequency. The next step is for marketers to optimize TV based on what they’ve learned from
their digital campaigns. For example, digital can be run first
to see who connects with the brand idea, and then followed
with a refined TV target based on that. Or TV can be used
first to tell the story, and digital can be used later to remind
people of the story.
Direct response is not currently a prime use case for pTV,
but surprising benefits may accrue for those willing to do their
homework. The first step here is to run targeted TV tests with
calls to action, and read market response in terms of online and
offline behaviors. In other words, test whether TV can generate
primary demand.
The absence of a click as a key performance indicator (KPI)
is endemic to TV, of course, but market response can be measured. Key aspects of pTV that support this are fine-grained
user control of activation and pacing, geo, and creative. Marketers can quickly saturate a target group, and then look for online
response to the TV as lift in website traffic from that target.
As marketers move closer to the ultimate goal of reaching
people at the precise moment when they’re receptive to the
brand’s message, the person rather than the device should
become the focus of planning. For consumers, this increases
relevance and resonance of all forms of advertising — a winwin for everyone.
ANDREW EIFLER
VP, product management, AppNexus @AEifler
@appnexus
The biggest improvement any marketer can make when it comes to programmatic is to
make sure they’re using the right type of solution for their needs.
When evaluating digital service providers (DSPs), the first thing you need to think
about is whether you’re really looking for more of a media-first solution or more of a
tech-first solution.
The choice is not as straightforward as you might think.
Are you an agency looking for a new vendor to roll out your media plan? Are you a
marketer who wants a full-service solution? If these questions resonate, you’re probably
looking for more of a media-first solution.
Are you a marketer with a data science team? Are you a marketer looking to build
a differentiated in-house media buying capability? Or, are you an agency or trade desk
with a trading team? If so, you’re probably looking for more of a technology-first solution.
When it comes to media-first solutions, the evaluation is fairly simple:
• Which DSP is going to deliver you the best results relative to your KPIs?
• Level and quality of service you receive
• Insights about what happened and why in your digital ad campaign
• Does the DSP also own any media properties that might create a conflict of interest
when selecting media?
• What assurances can the DSP give you that they’re working to minimize the “ad tech
tax” — fees taken out of your media budget by ad tech players
If you’re looking for a more technology-first solution you should care about:
• Does the DSP own their own servers or is the DSP just built on top of AWS (Amazon
Web Services)?
• Inventory access: does the DSP listen to 100% of the traffic from major supply side
platforms (SSPs) and exchanges or do they throttle inventory access?
• Is the DSP part of an end-to-end ad tech platform or is it a point solution DSP that
will require working with other ad tech companies if you need other parts of the ad
tech stack (such as SSP, publisher ad server)?
• What is the employee breakdown of sales/services versus product/engineering?
The best technology companies will be close to 50% product and engineering
• Does the DSP have open APIs for you to build on top of? How comprehensive are those APIs? Does the DSP have API-only customers?
Answering these questions should help guide you in selecting the right partner to
excel at programmatic.
JOANNA O’CONNELL
CMO, MediaMath @joannaoconnell @MediaMath
First getting started? Seek out knowledge on programmatic. Talk to brands
you admire and understand what they’re doing and how they’re thinking
about programmatic.
Challenge your own assumptions about what programmatic means. It’s
an approach to marketing, not a line item on a media plan. Learn about
how the concepts underlying programmatic — the automation of processes and decision-making driven by data, powered by machines — can help
you meet your business needs.
Marketers need to think about programmatic in terms of powering marketing of the future — real time, data driven, addressable, and scalable —
which is crucial for a brand looking for long-term competitive advantage.
Think about the long-term strategy, whether it’s in how you think about
organization design for yourself, your colleagues, and your agency, or in
how you think about selecting programmatic technology partners (such as
don’t get distracted by bells and whistles of some particular technology).
One of your jobs as a marketer is to choose partners that can help take you
on a longer-term journey. Look for partners who can educate, advise, grow
with you, and who think big picture and future-state.
If you’re dabbling in programmatic, consider why you’re dabbling
rather than embracing. There are lots of potential options to grow the
effectiveness and efficiency of your programmatic approach. Consider
questions like:
•Do you have the right rules in place — such as frequency management
and cross-channel message sequencing — that improve both the user
experience and business outcomes?
•How well do you understand the environment or environments where
your ads are running? Are you making the most of these environments,
for example, by building privilege — whether business or structural — into
relationships with publishers?
•Are you considering connecting what happens in your owned channels
managed by technologies such as campaign management systems to
your paid channels such as video advertising to create a more cohesive
programmatic marketing strategy?
Dabbling is a start, but if your goal is to get to addressable, real-time
marketing at scale, it’s necessary to think bigger and longer term.
RYAN PHELAN
VP, marketing insights, Adestra
@ryanpphelan @Adestra
Don’t rely on what only you know.
Many marketers use only internal data to identify their
best customers. It’s a good place to start, because it shows
how your customers behave on your websites and interact
with your products. But that could be for minutes a day,
week, or month.
You have to invest in external data from third parties to find
out what your customers are doing the rest of the day.
The key to accurate programmatic ad buying is knowing
where to advertise and what message to use. You have to be
able to identify your customers and what motivates them.
Suppose you choose Facebook to advertise to a specific customer group. But, do you know whether Facebook is
the most effective channel to reach that group? If you don’t
know for sure, you’re wasting money. Stupid data makes stupid advertising.
I once worked with a company that used a great set of internal personas. But, an external analysis blew up those personas
because they reflected only the time customers spent on its
websites. With strictly internal data, the company only had a
1-degree view of the customer instead of a 360-degree view.
The use of external data can help you discover channel propensity, demographics, location, motivations, and other factors
that could alter the personas you build with just internal data.
If you’re a beginner, analyze the data you have. Figure out
what you don’t know. Then, research what big data strategies
and third-party data can give you so you can build better customer models.
Finally, look at your email marketing program to identify customers. Email addresses are the key to the addressable consumer. Email has become PII, and that identification is essential
across programmatic ad buying. If you aren’t looking at your
email marketing program, you’re missing a big opportunity.
EDWARD THOMAS
Head of audience, Skimlinks
@thomed @Skimlinks
To get the most from a programmatic approach, think about who your
customer is today, and who you want
your customers to be tomorrow. Programmatic makes it all too easy to target your existing customers, while not
growing your customer base. Use audience targeting technologies to zero in
on the people you can influence. Avoid
preaching to the choir of existing customers and use advertising to reach
— and motivate — new customers. The
joy of programmatic is the ability to
cherry-pick the people you value the
most; so use it, and be prepared to bid
high for audiences and traits that are
most valuable to your campaign.
To successfully advance your efforts
using programmatic, look at what types
of people respond to your creative; different messaging and different calls to
action will trigger responses in different people. Very soon you’ll find that
picking and choosing the best users
for your best-performing creative will
yield disproportionate results. Knowing that a customer is in the final stages of making a purchase might mean
you should display your price-promotion creative. A different person who is
in the early stages of awareness might
respond better to a message about
your product features.
CHAD PEPLINSKI
SVP, media acquisitions and operations, Conversant
@conversant
It all starts with people. Marketers need to clearly identify their
target audience and articulate the type of response they’re looking to generate.
Whether you’re trying to build relationships with new customers,
communicate with existing customers, or re-engage former customers, you need to think about who those individuals are and how best
to reach them. Each has their own unique needs and expectations, so
marketers must have quality data at the individual level.
As it pertains to programmatic specifically, having great insights
and leveraging the right technology to select the precise moment
to message consumers is unquestionably important. However, you
cannot neglect the importance of scalability and match rates. Broad
segments sourced from third parties will not have client-specific data
that can be leveraged to initiate the right interaction. And pure content buys can reach a marketer’s target audience, but there will undoubtedly be waste in ad spend. Digital-savvy marketers considering
programmatic for the first time need to create or leverage their own
first-party data to execute the best possible buying strategy, maximize scalability, and ensure high match rates. If you can only reach a
small population, the program will have limited impact on your marketing objectives.
The biggest improvement any marketer already leveraging programmatic can make is to advance his decision-making. To do so
requires quality data and a scientific approach. Manually selecting
frequency, messaging windows, and sequencing takes time and
can miss that ideal moment to deliver your message. Advanced
decision-making allows marketers to have ongoing conversations
with individuals. Too often, marketers use programmatic to retarget
users and inundate them with the same ads over and over again.
Delivering the right message at the right place and moment in
time, and in a brand-safe environment, will dramatically elevate the
return and efficiency of marketers’ ad spend. It will also help to limit
fraud and drive viewability.
ANDREW FISCHER
Cofounder and CEO, Choozle
@AndrewFischer_1 @choozle
Programmatic advertising is powered by technology and datadriven platforms, so the initial step for marketers looking to
use it is to decide who’s going to run the platform. Until recently, the complexity of the ecosystem necessitated deep
and specialized programmatic expertise or an outsourced or
fully managed solution. As the industry has matured, however, many platforms have evolved to offer simpler programmatic software that caters to programmatic beginners even with
small budgets.
Thus, similar to search advertising, many marketers opt to run
their programmatic marketing in-house through a self-service
platform. Depending on factors including internal resources and
the size and complexity of the campaigns, marketers may want
to enlist a specialized ad agency to operate the platform and
run individual campaigns. Many agencies have expertise across
multiple platforms and provide value through their experience,
strategy, and efficiency in programmatic marketing.
Already involved with programmatic? Stay educated. Because programmatic marketing evolves so quickly, ongoing
education and practice are required to get the most out of
the medium. Private marketplaces, header bidding, and crossdevice targeting are just a few of the many newer tactics in the
space. To keep up on the bevy of new products, trends, and
challenges, marketers should actively consume industry articles and research, and also attend relevant industry meet-ups
and conferences.
Furthermore, many programmatic firms offer education
courses and programs that are free and available to all. These
education programs are typically self-service, enabling the
student to progress through the program at their own speed.
Transferring this education into practical testing with live campaigns will determine which new products and strategies work
best for each marketer.
JAMES SMITH
EVP, Americas, Criteo
@JamesGSmith @criteo
For marketers considering programmatic buying, I recommend first embracing a pure cost-per-click (CPC)
pricing model and establishing KPI up front. CPC pricing
drives cost efficiency while still enabling the potential to
scale. Ultimately, it helps marketers understand the true
ROI of their campaign because they pay for performance
rather than sheer volume.
To get the most out of a programmatic buying approach, set clear KPI goals to help you leverage the realtime optimization capabilities and transparency that
programmatic offers and ensure a satisfactory level of
accountability and control. It’s also important to choose
an established, reputable partner who can provide the
tools and service you need to meet your programmatic goals. Every marketer wants to get the most return
for every dollar he spends, so a partner that allows you
to benefit from unlimited impression views and viewthrough transactions without paying for them is absolutely the way to go. As you implement your programmatic strategy, test, re-test, and learn, and don’t hesitate
to make quick adjustments to better reach your goals.
Marketers dabbling in programmatic can integrate
prospecting and retargeting efforts throughout the
entire sales funnel, across all devices and channels,
to take their efforts to the next level. Layer in some
dynamic, personalized creative and tailored content
for a true one-to-one marketing solution that speaks
to all consumers individually. Doing so can drive up
click-through-rate (CTR) by 600%. An exact match
cross-device solution can provide the foundation for a
truly comprehensive omnichannel marketing strategy,
and access to a wealth of consumer data with extensive audience segmentation, consumer insights, and
behavioral learnings at scale.
DAVID STAAS
President, NinthDecimal @NinthDecimal
Programmatic ad buying is about more than automating your
marketing program; it provides marketers with an affordable
opportunity to target your key audiences across devices in real
time. For marketers looking to get started in programmatic,
the most effective first step is to transfer existing knowledge
to further it via programmatic. Getting started doesn’t mean
starting from scratch. Look at the audiences and targets you’re
having the most success with, and find a partner you can
work with who allows you to run the same audience segment
through them and on your programmatic platform of choice.
By enabling the exact same segment through two different
execution forms (traditional and programmatic), it opens the
door to new learnings.
Also, be sure that you’re working with a platform that allows
you to target and measure mobile audiences across devices at
scale. Mobile has quickly become the first screen for consumers, and mobile audience data provides marketers with rich
insights into consumers’ physical-world behaviors. Brands are
finding that mobile audiences are performing better for online
ad campaigns than online audiences due to mobile’s robust
audience intelligence.
To get the most out of mobile programmatic, don’t settle
for a platform that only offers limited audience segments; instead, work with a provider that allows you to leverage your
first-party consumer data to match and target the same specific consumer groups that you’re reaching out to on desktop, TV, direct mail, and other channels. This enables you to
market holistically to your consumer while also providing accurate ROI metrics.
In the same vein, for marketers already leveraging online
programmatic buying, it’s important to fully integrate mobile
into your strategy, rather than establishing it as a separate silo.
“MARKETERS WHO
ARE ALREADY
DABBLING IN
PROGRAMMATIC
CAN ADVANCE
THEIR EFFORTS BY
PUSHING FOR SCALE,
AND THEN ENGAGING
IN A PROGRAMMATIC
CROSS-MEDIA
STRATEGY”
Not only does this enable true omnichannel campaigns that engage consumers across any device, but it also allows you to take advantage of the
sophisticated measurement capabilities inherent in mobile marketing.
Mobile is unique in providing physical-world data about where the
consumer spends the majority of their time, which means you can measure things like incremental lift in store visits, or see how many of your
customers visited your physical location versus a competitor’s location
after seeing your ad. These capabilities finally give marketers a full picture
of their campaigns’ effectiveness among different target audiences as
well as across channels, laying the foundation for a new level of marketing optimization.
Additionally, marketers who are already dabbling in programmatic can
advance their efforts by pushing for scale, and then engaging in a programmatic cross-media strategy. We see a lot of brands dipping their
toe in the programmatic pool by making really small buys, or layering
lots of segments on top of each other. Both of those strategies make
it difficult to glean actionable insights or separate out what works. The
power of programmatic is that marketers can be rapidly agile and adapt
in test-and-learn situations. Pursuing a series of A/B tests where both
A and B have scale is now feasible in programmatic and is favorable to
an A/B/C/D approach with smaller scale. An approach with scale and
clearly defined segments will create success by working with the inherent
advantages of programmatic (real time, no spend/volume commits, and
no back and forth for optimizations or IO process), as opposed to within
the confines of traditional media buying.
Once your programmatic strategy is testing and refining segments at
scale, work with platforms that can extend your specific target segments
across all devices and media formats. Understand how the same segment performs on mobile Web, mobile app, desktop, and video.
Brands are continuing to shift larger portions of their marketing budget to programmatic, driving programmatic platforms to expand beyond
traditional online banner ads to video, mobile, TV, etc. As more types
of media become enabled for programmatic buying, proficiency in executing these types of cross-media campaigns will build a competitive
advantage for marketers.
MICHAEL BIRD
GM and global leader of sales and marketing solutions
Dun & Bradstreet
@DnBUS
To get the most from programmatic, start by defining your audience. Though
programmatic may sound intimidating, it’s no different than other targeted
marketing campaigns — it all starts with knowing who you want to reach. To
home in on your target, you must first determine the answers to the following questions:
• What companies have the need for your solutions? Do you target by revenue or number of employees?
• Are there specific industries you cater to?
• What types of individuals or roles have the greatest need for your solution? Are there specific titles that you need to reach?
Next, validate that your target profile accurately represents those who engage and buy from you. To do this, gather first-party data across online and
offline campaigns, your CRM system, and marketing automation platforms.
Run analysis on deals you closed in the past six months. Then match that data
back to your target profile to determine if you have the right attributes and
your data is accurate.
Don’t limit yourself by solely relying on first-party data. Sixty-two percent of
marketers agree that the number one advantage of buying media programmatically is the ability to layer insights and data. Engage a third-party data provider
to supplement the data you need and you’ll be on track to get started.
For marketers already dabbling in programmatic, be sure to commit to a regular
cadence of evaluating past campaigns and adjusting your approach accordingly.
Michael Jordan missed more than 9,000 shots and lost nearly 300 games in his
career, yet succeeded because he learned from his mistakes. Don’t get lured in by
the convenience of programmatic and fall into the set-it-and-forget-it trap.
Track the performance of your campaigns with your ad operations team,
agency, or digital service provider. Examine what you’ve learned from accounts
and customers you’ve recently converted and evaluate whether you’re attributing success accurately. Make sure you’re covering the key questions you should
be asking, and continually test new programmatic approaches. This includes refining the messaging, creative, segmentation, channels, and especially the data
sets you’re using.
BILL NAGEL
Cofounder and chief marketing strategist, Netsertive
@bonnagel @Netsertive
Programmatic has become a popular tool for many reasons. It’s
made media buying more efficient; it’s largely improved transparency; and, overall, it provides marketers the opportunity to
increase digital marketing performance based on enhanced targeting options and rich data. While it is, in many ways, today’s
flavor du jour for marketers, it doesn’t mitigate the need for a
marketer to spend time building a smart, targeted campaign
that’s aligned with KPIs and other goals. In other words, there’s
no replacement for tried-and-true marketing expertise.
When looking at some of the challenges that national product brands face when trying to market locally or through local
partners, programmatic is not necessarily the answer. In its current state, programmatic is a tool that national brand marketers
can use because they have the budget and resources to support
it. However, that’s not the case for every marketer; particularly
those that work at small, local organizations or those with limited marketing budgets. For these marketers, they need to work
closely with and leverage their brand affiliates to determine if a
programmatic campaign makes sense and will help them meet
mutual goals.
For those getting started with this type of automated platform, it’s important that they treat programmatic like they would
any other tool: Pay attention to objectives and determine how
the tool can help achieve marketing goals more successfully.
Programmatic is designed to help marketers make smarter
and more efficient decisions. For those already dabbling in programmatic, don’t overlook all the rich marketing data that can
be leveraged for real-time optimization. In addition, marketers
should look critically at removing the audiences that aren’t performing. By doing so, this will help marketers get closer to their
ideal target. Ultimately, programmatic is a data-rich tool that can
help optimize campaigns and help marketers reach and convert
local buyers at the time of purchase.