What Is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory using technology, audience data, and predefined campaign rules.
Programmatic Advertising, Explained Simply
Instead of manually negotiating every digital ad placement, programmatic technology automates much of the process.
Advertisers can define factors such as:
Audience
Geography
Budget
Bid strategy
Frequency
Device or channel
Campaign goals
Technology then evaluates available advertising opportunities and determines when and where ads should be served based on those parameters.
Audience data plays a major role in determining who marketers are attempting to reach.
Why Programmatic Advertising Matters
Programmatic advertising can enable marketers to:
- Reach defined audiences across large digital ecosystems
- Automate media buying
- Adjust bidding and delivery dynamically
- Use audience data for targeting
- Manage campaign frequency and scale
- Activate B2B and B2B2C audiences
- Measure and optimize digital media performance
PAULA'S PERSPECTIVE
Programmatic technology can make media buying more efficient, but technology alone does not create a strong audience strategy.
The quality of the campaign still depends on who the marketer is trying to reach and how accurately that audience can be identified.
A sophisticated buying platform working with weak audience data can simply automate wasted impressions faster.
Audience strategy and data quality need to come before activation.
— Paula Chiocchi
Programmatic Advertising in Practice
- Step 1Senior IT Leaders
- Step 2Audience Build
- Step 3Programmatic Platform
- Step 4Real-Time Bidding
- Step 5Delivered Impressions
Imagine a B2B technology company wants to advertise to senior IT leaders at enterprise organizations.
The company builds an audience using professional and company attributes, then activates that audience through a programmatic advertising platform.
The platform evaluates available digital ad impressions and delivers ads when eligible members of the target audience can be reached according to the campaign's rules.
Programmatic technology manages the buying process, while audience data determines who the campaign is designed to reach.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Programmatic advertising automates digital media buying using technology, audience data, and campaign rules to reach defined audiences at scale.
Related Glossary Terms
- Audience Activation
- Data Activation
- Display Advertising
- Addressable Advertising
- Media Activation
About Paula Chiocchi
Paula Chiocchi is the Founder and CEO of Outward Media, Inc. and host of B2B Influence: Spotlight on Industry Game-Changers, with decades of experience in data-driven marketing.