Effective Use Of Programmatic Advertising Instruments
At its core, programmatic advertising is a live auction with its own laws, which requires lightning-fast adjustment to arising circumstances. The ultimate goal of any advertising campaign is to find interested users and match them with the ad that would grant them the product or service they are looking for.
To achieve these goals, a funnel is created to sieve out a small group of real and “hot” buyers. To do this, the portrait of each user is studied. There are those who always browse in incognito mode, and we do not know anything about them, although they may be our target audience. There are those who carefully keep the entire history of their visits and clearly demonstrate their interests online. Then there are those who can have many different needs, but do not show them on the internet. And from this large number of people, we need to select a small group of those who correspond to our request.
The issue is that the moment an unsuspecting user appears on the horizon, a large number of players rush into the struggle to attract their attention. And since this is an auction, the initial bid can grow. In case of constricted advertising budgets, it is necessary to keep looking for other users within the same interest group, but with easier conversions. Considering the above, it sometimes makes sense to buy an expensive user and get a high conversion rate.
The issue of finding a “hot” customer starts when we decide to enable retargeting. This is a clear guarantee that we will reach a loyal audience, and the result should be excellent. However, in order not to get into a mess, the client decides to compare several platforms and connects 6–7 contractors to the advertising campaign.
The result is that no one has canceled the auction, there is competition for the price between the contractors, and the user that had cost less already costs more. In addition, there are competing brands, and the potential customers are their audience too, which means the number of auction players automatically increases.
Hence, the conclusion is that it is worthwhile to approach the implementation of a campaign wisely, because in pursuit of the lowest cost and a penchant for comparisons, you can work at a loss for yourself.
Almost all sites, including large-scale ones like Google and Yandex, operate on the basis of a second-price auction. This means that each player sets his maximum value, and the one whose bet wins actually purchases the sum of the second bet with a pre-determined premium, which is one cent in RTB.
It is therefore necessary to always remember that when planning within the framework of a limited list of sites (white lists), the market mechanisms that influence pricing cannot be ignored when it is not possible to switch to “fresh” resources.
Another important factor is that of the tired user. As a rule, in markets like Central Asia, a large number of brands work for the same audience. However, at some point comes to a phenomenon called banner blindness. After being bombarded with banners with cars, the user ceases to notice them. Thus we are faced with the fact that the user we need over time performs fewer targeted actions due to scattered attention, and the price increases significantly.
At the same time, there are few new, not sophisticated users. This segment simply does not have time to grow as fast as demand for it grows. This is exactly the case when you should think about expanding the funnel, because narrow targeting drives us into the framework of a high price. This also includes restrictions on banner formats, white lists, operating systems and more. The narrower the targeting, the higher the price. By removing these restrictions and redeeming cheaper users from similar segments, we can get indicators that will pleasantly surprise us.
There is therefore no need to be greedy and tread only down the beaten paths. Trust the expertise of the platforms you work with. Do not be afraid of recommendations for using new tools, formats or targeting, because the programmatic market is like a living organism: technologies, user behavior, and player behavior are changing.
Mobile traffic should not be ignored if the mobile version of the website is operating properly, because the cost per click there is much cheaper than desktop due to the high CTR. As a result, these investments can bring you real financial returns, even if statistics show otherwise.
In conclusion, it is important to say that to be as flexible and effective as possible, approach budget planning carefully, and leave financial parachutes in case of inflation for long-term planning, be open to experimenting and trust the expertise of those you work with.
The Ubex platform is the partner to turn to when seeking low costs and high conversions, considering the multiple platforms and channels it works with. The abundance of tools on the platform also grants users all the freedom necessary to plan their advertising campaigns and achieve high results.
