How advances in automation impact programmatic: an India perspective
The programmatic ecosystem has evolved significantly in only a few years. Personalized retargeting in particular has slowly become popular in the growing space of digital advertising in India. Automation can bring advertisers and marketers closer to their goals and personalized retargeting (based on deep learning models) can boost record results which were previously not possible.
According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts, 67% of the world’s digital display advertising will be traded programmatically by 2019. In the same year, the value of advertising sold programmatically will rise to US$84.9bn.
Programmatic ads have the potential to streamline the process of ad buying and is set to dominate the digital advertising sector in India. Advertisers are increasingly turning to programmatic technology to better their ROI’s on ad spend and tackle ad wastage. As over 700 million Indian feature phone users transition to smartphone and become internet first citizens, programmatic ads present a huge opportunity to tap into this untapped population for the digital advertising industry.
Programmatic ad buying is increasingly rising in popularity
Programmatic brings advertisers closer to the publishers. Today, there is no need for a middleman to negotiate deals between the two. The model also empowers marketers to have greater control of their campaigns – offering the flexibility of pricing, goal setting, and many other nuances to help them achieve specific goals.
Artificial Intelligence has made it possible to analyze users on an individual basis, rather than traditional segmentation which can only predict generic groups. Instead of putting emphasis on “where a banner is placed,” these machines optimize by caring more about “to whom the ad is shown.”
Automated & individualised creatives for target audiences
Using automation with creatives offers the flexibility to dynamically adjust banner templates in a campaign. From the whole pool of the banner resources available for the given campaign, each user will see the banner, which has the biggest click potential by this specific person. Besides that, algorithm tries to show ads with the highest click potential – the more effective the banner template, the more displays it gets. This is one key advantage of automatization – optimizing creative displays in real time.
Personalized automation can adjust creatives on the fly to match particular customer segments that might be of interest to the marketer.
Artificial intelligence paves the way for advanced automation in marketing
Artificial Intelligence is the key difference between standard automation and advanced versions. As first retargeter in the world to have implemented 100% of deep learning in all out technologies, RTB House has first hand experience in making this scenario a reality
Conversion rate and conversion value prediction algorithms are also able to increase overall performance from retargeting activities up to 29%. Moreover, deep learning-based recommendations, increase product selection efficiency by up to 41%, compared to campaigns that did not utilize the same methods. In general, according to our practice, self-learning algorithms help to achieve super-accurate recommendations that make advertising activities up to 50% more efficient.
Header bidding with ads.txt (advanced programmatic) will rise in prominence
Finally, marketers should pay attention to header bidding. This is an advanced programmatic technique whereby publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges. It is appreciated by both advertisers and publishers alike as it helps to improve the monetization of the ad surface and provides access to better inventory. The process becomes more transparent thanks to connection with ads.txt (authorized digital sellers). It is a tool which allows publishers to declare the companies authorized to sell their digital inventory, which can be very important for digital consumers. This ensures all parties and end-users are seeing ads from secure and reliable sources.
Summary
The ongoing takeover of automation soon will be a normal part of a digital advertising ecosystem, just as programmatic took over traditional digital ad methods. When powerful algorithms are able to learn from our data, it makes it easier for marketers to understand customers. The upcoming years will focus on developing programmatic tools by making them even more efficient, but at the same time easier to run and more transparent for both, buyers and publishers. One thing is sure, the advances in programmatic buying and automation are just getting started.
Kshitiz Shori is country manager for RTB House India.