What is Programmatic Buying For PPC?

Advancements in the advertising industry have led to data-driven methods to promote and market your business.

One relevant example is programmatic advertising.

A study found programmatic ad spend will top $59.45 billion in 2019. By 2021, $81 billion of digital display ad spend will be conducted programmatically.

How can programmatic buying benefit your business? What does it even mean? This guide will share everything you need to know about this latest marketing trend and how to leverage it for your business.

What Is Programmatic Buying?

Previously, buying ads was a long and arduous process.

Advertisers were required to purchase impressions from publishers, negotiate terms for ad inventory, and send proposal requests to get their ads out into the world.

This meant a lot of back and forth and follow-ups across multiple parties. It was costly in most cases and, worse, inefficient.

The rise of programmatic advertising has sped up the process. Advertisers can now leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to automate the ad buying process in real-time.

This graphic from PubMatic shows the difference between the different types of ad buying:

So, how does programmatic buying work? Here’s an example to help you understand the process.

Let’s say you sell tech products, like an iPhone.

You opt for a PPC campaign to promote your products on Google. Your goal is to bid on advertising inventory to get your promotional content featured on Facebook, Google, or in a 30-second pre-roll video on YouTube.

In the programmatic buying process, cookies or anonymous data are sent to a demand-side platform where the ad-buying occurs. Data can help identify users who have visited your website, live in your geographic location, or are existing customers.

This data could help you identify people who resemble your ideal target audience. In this case, it could be users who have read an article about the latest iPhone, visited the Apple website, or searched for iPhone reviews.

How to Get Your Ads Shown to High-Converting Users With These Attributes

Real-time bidding occurs between various advertisers who want to send an ad impression to the user. This entire process is automated and based on algorithms rather than human input—and it takes less than a few seconds.

The winner of the bid gets to show their ad to the website user.

Here’s to hoping website users will click the ad and convert!

In summary, programmatic buying lets advertisers identify their target market through behavioral insights rather than just keywords, bid on those users, and deliver the ad in the blink of an eye.

Advanced ad targeting capabilities means access to high-converting consumers who are more interested in the products or services you offer.