Advertising Opinion South Africa

How programmatic buying can affect your bottom line

Programmatic buying is a relatively new concept in South Africa and it uses highly advanced technology - both of which can make it seem intimidating.

If you are a marketer who has mainly operated outside of digital, planning a programmatic ad-buying budget probably feels very overwhelming. The reality is, programmatic buying allows more control over your advertising campaign than most traditional platforms.

How programmatic buying can affect your bottom line
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Here are some simple points to help you understand how programmatic buying adds enormous value to your marketing budgets, and therefore your bottom line.

1. With the tech’s ability to hyper-focus targeting (for eg:, males, age 18 – 24, living in Pretoria, who have shown interest in skateboarding and hip-hop music) you get a lot more bang for your buck. Almost every rand spent will speak to a potential customer. Plus with retargeting, programmatic buying takes it to the next level (saving you even more money). For example: you can request that your ads are only shown to each user a certain number of times (again, ensuring very little wastage). And if there are users who engage with your ad but don’t convert into a sale, there is the ability to request that they are engaged with a second time, but with a different ad. The bottom line is that you save by not spending money on impressions that will not lead to goal conversions. No wasted budget plus higher targeted reach, equals an impressive return on investment.

2. Within the programmatic buying space there are different ways to ensure your ads are being placed on the correct platforms – again, ensuring that each rand spent shows value and return on investment. Semi-private market places offer carefully selected publishing platforms, allowing for a lot more control. As Bob Arnold from Google says in this article: “One growing trend is the popularity among big publishers to use private marketplaces and programmatic direct buys to sell their inventory. This means there is more premium inventory available programmatically than ever before, and this is the inventory brands want to buy. Depending on the desired mix of control and scale, brands can choose from a myriad of options to ensure they reach people in brand safe environments.”

3. Programmatic buying is ‘automated’ ad buying en masse. In essence, it is bulk buying but with highly advanced technology. And if the objectives are clearly strategised, then there is no compromise on quality. It’s quantity and quality which means it’s a win-win for both your campaign objectives and your budget. Ramesh Ramakrishnan sums it up beautifully in Digitalist Magazine: “There is a good chance of better campaign ROI not only because of media performance or better targeting but also because of the price squeeze, man power reduction due to better tools.”

As a marketer you can show fantastic results and return on your investment, all of which will positively affect your bottom line. Traditional media buying is still important for bespoke media buys, however there is no denying that programmatic buying saves time and money and, if we look at international it is clear that in time, programmatic will be the way that all non-bespoke media will be bought.

About Paula Raubenheimer

Paula Raubenheimer is head of programmatic at SouthernX, The SpaceStation. Paula has a B Bus Science (Law) degree and completed Post-Graduate studies in Marketing and Advertising Communications. Before commencing with SouthernX, Paula was the group commercial director of the Habari Group. On leaving the Group in 2013, Paula launched an e-commerce store, which she made profitable after only four months of operation.
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