Programmatic gives ad buyers huge advantages, which is why a growing number of marketers are shifting their dollars towards this strategy. Advertisers can easily put the best data they have in-house and from third parties to target specific audience characteristics, like age, gender, geography and interest. They can also target on particular aspects of the inventory they buy, including ad placement, content category and device. Good programmatic software also gives advertisers real-time performance insights of their campaigns.

With programmatic, advertisers gain a single holistic view of their campaigns, making it easier to manage their data, frequency cap across publishers and devices, and control quality. Advertisers should seek a fully transparent view of metrics like completed view rates, click-through rates, in target audience delivery, and where their ads appeared.  Advertisers should look for the capability to track and optimize these KPIs and then make in flight adjustments during campaigns.

Programmatic advertising is enabled by the software to buy video programmatically, namely a demand-side platform (or DSP). A full featured video DSP gives ad buyers access to video inventory from web, mobile web, mobile app publishers, and TV.

DSP’s also enable advertisers to consolidate all of their buys in one place. This single source of information makes management and reporting easier, giving advertisers cross publisher and cross device insights to improve their campaign performance.

For many advertisers, programmatic is the right way to use customer data and broader audience intelligence in digital advertising initiatives. For many agencies, programmatic has shown to be an efficient, cost-effective way to automate ad buying and realize greater returns by using advertiser and third party data to select, optimize and enhance paid media. Advertisers and agencies want their campaigns to tell powerful stories, shift consumer perception, and ultimately drive sales -- and programmatic is helping them meet these goals.

Programmatic make video ad buying more effective and more efficient. However, given the complexity it’s not hard to see why there may be a steep learning curve to a new set of skills required to use it effectively. It takes a training, internal communications, and a mindset of experimentation to get it right. You don’t need to tackle everything at once. If you’re ready to go programmatic, find a partner to help you navigate the waters. If you’ve gotten this far, you’re already taken the first step.

By Guy Yalif, VP of Global Marketing, BrightRoll