Demand-side platforms (DSPs) are all the rage in online advertising today.
Why?
As buying and selling of online inventory moves from the relationship-driven, "three-martini-lunch" deal to
a programmatic, impression-by-impression auction, advertising buyers are salivating at the opportunity to "cherry pick" the best inventory. So fire up your DSP contract, set your traders loose, and
bask in the glory of online advertising victory!
But hang on. The DSP promises of convenience and efficiency are certainly compelling. But the path to achieving real success in finding,
engaging, converting and retaining your audiences and prospects online is much more complex than DSPs will admit.
Here are five functions a DSP cannot do for major advertisers.
1. Create highly specific audiences. DSPs do not allow advertisers to leverage rich datasets from a variety of sources in order to create highly granular audience definitions, and in
turn, deliver highly-relevant advertising experiences wherever the consumer may be.
2. Deliver dynamic marketing content tailored for each audience. DSPs cannot offer
full-funnel conversion rate optimization which enables advertisers to create a relevant experience - specific ads and landing pages - for each consumer.
3. Control all ad placements
across all media. DSPs do not support multiple patterns of media acquisition. These platforms excel at buying remnant display inventory from ad exchanges but do not allow the integration and
placement of Class 1 inventory.
4. Manage multi-channel advertising. DSPs are display-centric solutions. They don't serve ads across channels -- search, social media, mobile
-- all rapidly growing areas of interactive marketing. The result is even more data fragmentation - and who wants that?
5. Attribute conversion to all exposures across multiple
channels. DSPs focus on the last click and attribute success to that ad exposure - a primitive way to evaluate a campaign's success. Today's advertisers must be able to evaluate how many
times a customer was exposed in an exchange, across exchanges, and across channels to perform attribution and calculate their real ROI.
In the end, the current DSP players are focusing on the
problems of advertisers much too narrowly.
If DSPs want to truly play a role in controlling the lion's share of online advertising dollars, they need to raise their game. They must focus on
delivering relevant and engaging advertising experiences that capture the attention of consumers -- regardless of the ad exchange or online channel with which the consumer chooses to interact.
Until DSPs have the five critical functions listed above, advertisers must look for other solutions to deliver the relevant experiences that consumers crave. If not, these advertisers may as
well return to enjoying those three martini lunches.