• by Emmy Spahr , Op-Ed Contributor, March 16, 2016

Achieving success in the evolving programmatic construct requires both foresight and budgetary flexibility. A buyer’s approach to the inventory waterfall can piece together a programmatic campaign using technology to capture more than the right audience at the right time, but also in a variety of places. Moreover, the efficiency gained through automated buying in typical data-driven executions can be a catalyst for media teams to push digital budgets’ expansion into a variety of inventory sources or channel trials.  

Agile marketing techniques also apply to advertising. Rather than buying with a set budget across various scenarios, the goal is to diversify the tactics and optimize dollars according to results once significant scale is achieved.  

Considering the prioritization for the content an ad appears on can be counterintuitive when seeking the lowest possible bid cost to meet a campaign metric.  Choosing the right foundation of sites through a whitelist helps, but often you are blind to the actual URL where an impression has appeared. 

Anticipating how a campaign is going to perform across various categories is one strategy for testing and learning where a brand’s best performance lies. In the tactical set-up on a DSP, you are able to design a buy structure to separate the preferred vertical of sites from the run-of-universe impressions. This way you can learn if the most desirable impressions by content are worth a higher bid.

Handpick audiences in real time. Private marketplaces are a turnkey way to test the reach of historical best-performing segments on premium and contextually relevant URLs.  They can also consolidate the number of direct orders an advertiser places for a campaign. With the recent development of header bidding, we see that when it’s imperative to own a certain page, sellers want to give certain buyers the first right of refusal.  Automation is bringing more opportunity to purchase hand-picked sites and audiences in real time, and with variable pricing through private deals.

Don’t forget mobile. The influence of mobile buys can be particularly powerful for prospecting and mid-funnel customer growth.  Advertisers should be considering open access to these specific configurations on platforms for a new way to scale their existing data sets. 

With most clients relying on desktop and cookie sources to build audiences, the mobile IDs in platforms tools and cross-channel solutions can be leveraged to construct a separate, low-risk tactic. However, the tagging and tracking of the customer journey must be set up within the mobile destinations to accurately measure these trials.  Buyers must take advantage of the flexibility to drive investments and innovation for brands.  In order to capitalize on the mass of in-app mobile inventory, various ad sizes and specs for effective creative need to be developed. The convenience of these tests is that they can be expanded or suspended with the flip of a switch.

Smart data is narrowing the gap.The value proposition of programmatic buying gains more credibility every day, as concepts such as the programmable economy seep into the business lexicon.  But the landscape remains daunting for digital buyers tackling the multitude of exchanges and PMP opportunities. If you’re a campaign manager overseeing programmatic buys, you know how challenging it is to strike a balance between meeting client goals and capturing valuable inventory by leveraging the tools and access through DSPs.  

Recent acquisitions underscore the trend. The recent acquisition of Viant by Time Inc. demonstrates how quickly the gap is closing between premium, high-value impressions and quality audience data application in real time. Similarly, AOL has a major stake in condensing Verizon’s customer data, with the acquisition of Millennial and Adap.TV inside one platform to bring data and content to the market.

These synergies are driving a closer relationship between the data applied and the actual sites where advertisers want to reach consumers. Clients and media teams must become accustomed to malleable digital investments to match the potential of these innovations.