Programmatic display ad spend (desktop and mobile) is a $9 billion market that is expanding at almost 30% a year. Spend is expected to exceed $30 billion in 2019, according to the latest report from The Boston Consulting Group, with similar figures reported this month by the IAB. Raj Dhanda, business development director at VisualDNA talks exclusively to ExchangeWire about the creative and targeting issues that keep programmatic marketers awake at night in today’s data-driven advertising ecosystem. 

Performance-based programmatic advertising has slowly but surely engrained itself in our everyday lives. However, programmatic advertising, if not managed correctly, carries the risk of enraging consumers with ads for products they’ve merely glanced at or, even worse, after buying them! Many advertisers use programmatic to generate clicks; however, are savvy marketers using programmatic as an effective way to engage with their target audience?

This is where ‘programmatic branding’ comes in. The phrase is everywhere, from reputable consultancy reports, to the biggest summits and sound bites from traditional performance marketing platforms looking for ways to diversify.

There’s evidently a huge desire from agencies and brands to spend more on brand advertising programmatically. In order to do this well, marketers need to understand how to truly differentiate a brand from the competition, and how to measure success without using traditional performance metrics, such as clicks.

No one will deny that inventory selection, viewability, transparency and creative formats are all elements of a good programmatic branding strategy. However, as programmatic evolves, people are disillusioned with dumb big data and want to improve engagement with the power of smart data. Brand marketers today are asking:

-- “What levers are there in the programmatic ecosystem that will help shift perceptions of my brand and increase engagement?’

-- “How can I optimise my creative targeting to suit different personality types?”

-- “What can I do to ensure my brand is connecting with my audience on an emotional level, and how can I measure this?’

-- “Which psychological type is most likely to assist in creating the halo effect around my brand?”

The answer is, as with performance marketing, through the use of smart and differentiated data.

These days a brand can optimise towards ‘high extraversion’, if the creative depicts excitable group scenarios, towards people with ‘high conscientiousness’ if it’s trying to demonstrate its eco-friendly credentials, and towards ‘openness’ if it’s challenging consumers to think differently. This type of data is here now and the personality combinations that can be accessed are endless.

For example, a conscientious person would be likely to respond positively to messages about a product’s responsibly sourced components – think ‘sustainably farmed’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ – while an extrovert who would tend towards impulsive purchases might favour heavily discounted or ‘limited edition’ offers.

There’s no denying the industry has done well to devise sophisticated tech and data strategies to deliver on performance goals. There are some great examples of DSPs, trading desks and data companies that collaborate to make this work. Currently these campaigns often use similar operational metrics for engagement as for direct response. The industry needs to move on for more brands to be confident to allocate an increasing share of brand budgets to digital.

Take Coca-Cola. Does the head of marketing really place that much importance on which site generated the most clicks on their ad, or does the marketing team make do with this metric, as there’s nothing better around? Does Coca-Cola really expect a user to buy a can immediately at the point of seeing an ad online? When a company spends on ‘brand’, it is trying to create an emotional connection with its target group. A good example is the seasonal Christmas Coca-cola ad, which aims to convince consumers that Christmas isn’t the same without it. The company invests in you buying into the dream.

Nike, Audi, Apple – all of these brands want access to consumers’ feelings and emotions. This is demonstrated by multi-million pound creative budgets, which don’t promote any specific offer. The objective is to create or maintain that ‘halo effect’; the feeling in the hearts and minds of current and prospective consumers that will keep them dreaming about their brands for years.

What we see evolving is a clearer distinction between brand and performance buying strategies. With the use of smart data there is a better chance of brands achieving a positive connection with their consumers – instead of becoming a stone in their shoe (that they only looked at once).