Co-written by Associate Media Director Elissa Brown and Senior Media Planner Lauren Jennings
Navigating the landscape of digital advertising and digital buying can be a challenge for brands. Terminology, practices, and technology are changing so quickly that it’s difficult to assess what tools will best help your brand grow. The Women’s Marketing media team brings expertise across all forms of media—including the most promising opportunities on the digital frontier. Associate Media Director Elissa Brown and Senior Media Planner Lauren Jennings provide an overview of two key digital buying options: programmatic ad buying and ad networks.
“The digital advertising ecosystem provides a variety of ways to purchase inventory. In addition to buying media directly from digital publishers, which offers a safe and rich editorial environment but can be expensive, programmatic and ad networks are other options for brands. Programmatic and ad networks offer opportunities for brands to buy digital at various levels, such as static banners, rich media display, including high-impact, and video placements across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices,” says Jennings.
Programmatic Overview
Programmatic advertising helps automate the decision-making process of digital media buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Programmatic ads are placed using artificial intelligence and real-time bidding for online display, social media advertising, mobile and video campaigns.
“The benefits of real-time buying allow ads to reach target consumers wherever they are and whenever the brand message may be relevant, reducing wasted impressions and budget,” explains Brown. “Programmatic partners offer very detailed insights and learnings are leveraged consistently throughout the campaign for real-time optimization,” she says.
“Consumers are targeted based on demographic information, behavioral modeling, custom audience modeling, keyword context, search retargeting, competitive analysis, offline retail, and shopper/loyalty card data,” Jennings says. “Leveraging this data helps brands to reach the ideal consumer to build brand awareness and, ultimately, sales,” she advises.
Ad Network Overview
An ad network works with site publishers from all over the web to help monetize any of the publishers’ unsold inventory. In this form of digital buying networks aggregate the unsold inventory and use technology to effectively package it into content and demographic groupings that allow advertisers to reach a number of individual and interests.
“Due to their scale on multiple premium and mass sites, ad networks can effectively target consumers, which allows for an array of strategic optimizations toward top performing sites, placements, profiles, and targeting tactics during the campaign. Additionally, media buyers should be holding these networks accountable via Ad Verification partners, to ensure placements are brand safe, viewable, and 100% transparent with their site lists,” explains Brown.
Digital Media Buying & Women’s Marketing
As digital commerce growth accelerates, it will be imperative for marketers to include digital to their media mix. Is programmatic or an ad network right for you? Contact Women’s Marketing to better understand the digital media buying landscape and discover the best options for your brand.
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