Dax Hamman is the chief product officer at Chango
Programmatic marketing is on the rise. And that’s definitely a good thing. But before we get too excited about the promise of programmatic, we need to remember that not all programmatic marketing is the same and that if you’re not using programmatic in the right way, you could be undermining the very efficiency it’s meant to provide.
Dax Hamman
How did we end up with an inefficient form of programmatic? After all, programmatic arose as a way to make marketing more efficient through the use of data – it’s essentially the glue that binds data together.
The problem, simply put, is that a lot of vendors are targeting users with the same creative over and over. And it’s a big problem, because while consumers support the idea of viewing relevant ads in exchange for free content, they don’t want to feel stalked by a single brand.
Too many brands today have ended up on this well-traveled road of inefficient targeting. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s another, far better programmatic road that isn’t being taken nearly enough. On this programmatic road, the differences amount to much more than better frequency capping. On this road, you’re not simply retargeting users based on the their visits to a given site. Rather, you’re retargeting based on a wide array of factors, from the device being used, to the time of day, to time on site, to referral data, and on and on.
To be clear, more data doesn’t necessarily mean serving more impressions. On the contrary, the power of data often comes down to knowing whom not to target or when not to target. Say a user has visited a site for a Vegas hotel. With simple retargeting this user might be bombarded with display ads for the hotel for weeks to come. But maybe there’s browsing data that suggests that the user is also a father and is browsing in search of products for his young children. He doesn’t want to be served Vegas ads at this time and serving them risks not only wasting money but also alienating the user. Or maybe he’s browsing on a phone and thus is less likely to make a hotel reservations at the moment. Why not wait until he’s browsing on his desktop before serving the next ad?
More columns from Dax Hamman
• Programmatic’s future use paints a bright picture
• Advertising Strategy: Get with the flow
And, sure, this less-traveled road can seem more expensive at first, as you need access to an enormous amount of data – as well as to people with the know-how to use it. But if more people were taking this road they would realize that, in the end, it’s ultimately the less expensive road. Because on this road, you’re not wasting money by serving ads to the wrong people or to the right people at the wrong times. You’re spending less on every conversion and creating a better consumer experience. And that’s the road we should all be taking.
