How Does Programmatic Buying Help Your Small Business Grow?

Programmatic advertising is one of the fastest-growing segments of digital advertising worldwide. As more and more advertising investment moves online, the automated or programmatic processing of ad sales and executions continues to increase its market share. The coronavirus pandemic only contributed to the growth of programmatic advertising. In the Asia-Pacific region, PubMatic’s Quarterly Mobile Index found that programmatic ad buying started 2021 strong because of the trend towards increased screen time. The upsurge in digital media consumption and mobile app usage has presented programmatic ads with greater opportunities to drive business results. One of the advantages of programmatic advertising is scalability. This means even small businesses can utilise the strategy to fuel their growth. PurpleClick, a trusted programmatic advertising agency, shares how this digital strategy helps increase your small business’s online share of voice and revenue.

Table of Contents

1. Advanced Tracking Capabilities
2. Less Wasted Ad Spend
3. Contextual Campaigns

Programmatic Advertising Benefits for Small Businesses

1. Advanced Tracking Capabilities

You can approach programmatic advertising in two ways: prospecting or retargeting. With the first strategy, you’re reaching people with no previous interactions with your brands. You can do this by placing ads on websites relevant to your ideal customer. This seems like a basic tracking feature, but with programmatic advertising, you can even reach people related to your target buyer who might be interested in your products. For instance, let’s say you’re an e-commerce store selling clothes for women aged 20 to 40. The traditional method would place ads on websites that your ideal customer is likely to visit. Programmatic ads, on the other hand, can also reach people who may buy your products for people they know. These include boyfriends, mothers and friends looking for gifts for loved ones who fit your buyer persona. Meanwhile, retargeting lets you re-engage visitors who’ve already shown interest in your brand but didn’t complete their transaction. You’ll analyse how users came across your website, which landing pages have the most traffic, which product pages get lots of visits but low conversions and other relevant data. Then, you can set up a retargeting campaign with an offer that increases the likelihood of people reconsidering and coming back to your site to complete their purchase. For small brands, you can focus your budget on retargeting existing website traffic. This way, you maximise your visits and decrease the amount of wasted ad clicks. Once conversions increase, you may want to shift your strategy to a ‘combination campaign’ that uses both prospecting and retargeting.

2. Less Wasted Ad Spend

Ad waste is a perpetual problem for brands. A survey by Rakuten Marketing found that 1,000 marketers worldwide waste 26 per cent of their advertising budgets on ineffective strategies and channels. Wasted ad spend is due to various reasons, but the more popular ones are:

• Ad fraud (i.e., when bots see your ads instead of human users)
• Poor targeting and campaign planning
• Weak creative messaging or lack of ad variations for optimisation

With programmatic advertising, you can decrease your ad spend wastage and increase your ROI. Its targeting features make sure that you’re choosing the most strategic platforms to show compelling ads to your ideal customer. Other than its advanced targeting capabilities, programmatic advertising can also bypass ad blockers. You can automate your buying, selling and delivery of digital out-of-home ads. These ads are unskippable and immune to ad blockers, increasing the chances of your target audience seeing them.

3. Contextual Campaigns

Lastly, the most advanced feature of programmatic advertising is contextual campaigns. These campaigns let you control which consumers see which ads and when. The goal is to show the right ad at the perfect time to your ideal customer, which helps guarantee that they’ll engage with your brand. Contextual targeting decides where to place your ads depending on the content of the webpage instead of the visitor’s browsing habits. This way, your ad won’t look out of place. And with contextual targeting, if the visitor is interested in the content of the page, then it’s likely that they’ll also take interest in your ad. Contextual campaigns narrow down your potential audience to people who have higher chances of interacting with your brand. This increases your opportunity for conversion and minimises wasted ad spend.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the benefits of programmatic buying for small businesses are undeniable. The strategy is highly scalable, capable of delivering real results even with a limited budget. But the success of your programmatic ad campaign still largely depends on your planning and execution. Define your objectives clearly, leverage your customer data and align your campaign with your ideal customer’s path to purchase so you can reap the rewards of programmatic advertising.