Category: Programmatic

A guide to personalised advertising online

Hello Brian. There are many ways an online ad can be personalised and targeted.

In this introduction to personalised ads online, I thought I’d order the information by marketing channel, rather than by types of targeting.

Ads can be targeted to behaviour, demographic, time and audience. Most people think of personalisation as a little more tailored than, say, device type, and more about personal information that a company has about you, be it name and age, or browsing and purchase behaviour.

Personalisation, despite implying one-to-one interaction, is often a more sophisticated automated and rules-based take on traditional segmentation of a database and delivery of a marketing message.

It can be based on information you have given to a company or on information inferred or collected with tags, or matched up with third-party data.

With marketing technology becoming more sophisticated and at the same time arguably easier to use, personalisation is an area set for prominence in marketing over the next couple of years.

CRM software allows companies to tailor web experiences to different segments of users and this redefines the purpose of a previously static web page or marketing message.

In this post though, I’m concentrating on advertising online and how it is personalised. Away we go!

Article Programmatic

Real-time advertising spend increased 80% in 2013: infographic

Real-time advertising spend increased 80% in the UK in 2013 and now accounts for 14% of the display market, according to data included in a new infographic.

Last year real-time ad revenue in the UK reached €204m, compared to €82m in France and €113m in Germany.

The graphic also highlights the growth of premium real-time display and video inventory, as well as the variety of brand formats available.

Econsultancy recently published a Real-Time Marketing Report in association with Monetate, which is based on a survey of almost 900 client-side and agency respondents.

The report focuses on a range of channels alongside real-time display advertising, revealing that although most respondents recognise the importance of delivering winning experiences to their customers in a near instantaneous manner, marketers are finding real-time marketing to be full of challenges.

Five arrows in the bull's-eye of an archery target. Selective focus with the focus being on the back end of the arrow, with an out of focus target in the background.

Article Programmatic

Display retargeting buyer’s guide highlights growth in mobile retargeting

The retargeting industry has seen a boom in recent years as consumers become increasingly immune to generic display campaigns, creating a need for highly targeted and personalised campaigns aimed at the individual rather than the masses.

For advertisers, site retargeting has become standard practice, and they are looking at new and innovative ways to retarget their customers.

Programmatic

Programmatic advertising: what is it and what are the trends in the market?

70% of display advertising is still bought in the old fashioned manner. Yep, that’s right, faxing order forms, negotiating prices etc.

But the advertising market is changing with programmatic advertising on the rise, whether it’s real time bidding (RTB) or programmatic direct.

There are new companies springing up all over the place providing technology platforms for buying real-time targeted advertising (so called ‘demand side platforms’) or technology to help publishers automate and optimise the selling of impressions.

New research from Turn, a digital advertising platform, shows the programmatic market is getting more competitive in some sectors, with CPMs increasing across channels, apart from mobile (where supply is quickly increasing).

What are the opportunities for marketers in different sectors when using RTB platforms?

In this post I’ll quickly explain a bit about programmatic advertising, as it can be a bit of a mind-bender for those on the outside, and I’ll take a little look at Turn’s latest research into trends.

Article Strategy

Q&A: Chris O’Hara on the nuts and bolts of programmatic direct

Chris O’Hara, Co-Founder and CRO of Bionic Advertising Systems, is the author responsible for our recently published Programmatic Marketing: Beyond RTB Best Practice Guide.

Below, he answers some questions about the new programmatic direct landscape and other topics covered in the report.

Article Digital Advertising

Is the strength of digital also its Achilles heel when attracting brands online?

We are lucky to be working in the digital industry as it provides the most targetable and measurable medium yet in terms of marketing.

With the ability to combine first and third party data, bring offline data into play and combine it with granular behavioural and audience data (such as pages visited, searches made, content viewed, and time spent on certain activities), very specific audience segments can be defined, built and reached.

If you want to build an audience of wealthy families who live in Scotland, are interested in curling and are currently reading regularly reviews on executive cars, as well as looking for quotes on car insurance for example, these people can be identified and targeted accordingly.

Article Data and Analytics

The nuts and bolts of programmatic marketing (part three)

My last post covering the mechanics that underpin programmatic media provoked some interesting questions.

In particular, the following comment…

Article Mobile

Programmatic media unpacked (part two)

Before we start, thanks for the feedback on my first instalment on programmatic media, this was much appreciated and forms a useful basis for this next piece.

This post covers the mechanisms that underpin programmatic, and attempts to portray the varying perspectives of those involved.

Article Social

The Twitter API: human meets programmatic

The official launch of the Twitter Ads API was inevitable but still important for the marketing ecosystem. One of the world’s biggest human-fed and –curated platforms has taken a step in the right direction – using technology to help make marketers’ lives easier.

Twitter is taking a page out of the playbook of Facebook, which started its journey toward a mature advertising business with its own API in 2009. They built on this success with the launch of Facebook Exchange in 2012. As one of the original FBX partners, we have seen the data and scale available become important to many top brands.

Article Video Advertising

The movement to viewable ads vs served ads: infographic

As we begin to sift the huge amounts of data at our fingertips, we are starting to see a move toward better advertising solutions: more targeted and more relevant ads served to potential customers who will actually act on them. This is needed in display advertising more than any other.

In 2012, we started to see publications shift toward more effective types of inventory from ad servers. Sites such as Forbes and USA Today have moved from allowing served ads to viewable ads, which means advertisers aren’t being charged for ads that aren’t seen by the consumer.

Some may consider this a bold move, and those serving the inventory are likely to unhappy with this move, but a movement to a viewable ad measurement, will make the ROI of display advertising reflect the actual truth of what is seen.