Programmatic ad spend is estimated to cross $ 247 billion in 2024 in the US alone.
With such huge investments, it only makes sense to want to learn about the strategies for maximizing ROI in programmatic advertising.
Let us explain that below.
What is ROI for Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is an automated process of buying and selling media impressions almost virtually.
The return on investment in programmatic advertising is, therefore, the net profit generated from the conversions and revenue generated from, you guessed it, programmatic advertising.
Simply put, it is the return generated against the cost of running ads on all the programmatic advertising channels.
Sure, it is cheaper and faster than the traditional methods, but the goal is to increase your revenue. Let us explain in our blog how you could do so.
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Strategies for Maximizing ROI for Programmatic Advertising
It all comes down to being smart with monetary and resource investment, minimizing lost ad spend, using segmentation, and right targeting strategies to reach the right audience.
Below we explain these and some other effective strategies to maximize ROI for programmatic advertising.
1. Unify User Data
Programmatic advertising relies on big data to work its magic by employing AI and machine learning to land your ad in front of the perfect candidate.
Data comes in both structured and unstructured data.
For example, experts use specialized tools to analyze unstructured data like pictures, videos, and comments to identify customer behavior.
Performing assessments like sentiment analysis, identifying interests, and the type of content they engage with gives the basis for matching a programmatic ad to the candidate.
Integrating your primary user data with the secondary data provided by data management platforms (DMP) enhances your capability to laser target audiences.
Learn about tracking and analysis using Google Tag Manager for improved ROI in this blog.
2. Unify Programmatic Advertising Analytics
Unifying analytics on ad performance across channels allows businesses to build a cohesive view of their ad performance.
Access to real-time data on the key performing metrics (KPIs) like impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per action (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS) allows marketers to adapt quickly.
They can use the data at scale to improve their marketing strategies on critical touchpoints.
The key here is to unify your data and gain access to the analytics at scale in real-time to optimize ad budget and enhance conversion attribution, consequently maximizing ROI in programmatic advertising.
3. Take Data-Driven Decisions
Big data and artificial intelligence are at the core of programmatic advertising. You rely on data to create your customer personas and use that to segment your audiences.
Matching a publisher to an advertiser or marketer is achieved programmatically, but it still depends on the data you supply and the parameters you select.
Use the data-driven insights from the demand side/supply side/data management platforms to your advantage. Remember, you understand your audience, the business, and several industry factors.
Marketers could use data-driven insights to make decisions like;
- Tweaking marketing campaigns.
- Optimize ad copies.
- Improve audience targeting.
- Ad retargeting
- Personalize ads for different audience segments.
- Reallocate ad budgets.
- Switch priority devices (e.g., tablet to mobile).
Avoid the pitfall of overreliance on data.
Combine your business acumen with the data to better understand business/industry trends and audience preferences to make data-driven decisions.
4. Keep Your Ad Creative Fresh
Be very mindful of keeping your ad copy interesting and exciting. Sure, you want the audience to get your message, and repetition is a great way to do so.
However, if repeated too much, the audience loses interest, and the engagement drops.
Who better to know than the social media giant Facebook? So, failing to update your ad creative over time can result in lower impressions.
Optimize your ad copy for freshness and innovation by keeping tabs on your ad’s performance. If the metrics start dropping, add a fresh copy in the mixer for better results.
One way to keep it fresh is to create a variety of iterations for your ad and then apply creative rotation to deliver the same message in different exciting ways (even formats).
Rope in analytics to make data-driven decisions about the vocabulary, style, and messaging that works best in your favor.
5. Dynamic Creative Optimization
As mentioned, staleness works against ad impressions and engagement.
Dynamic creative optimization protects your ad copies from monotony and improves personalization by using machine learning and AI to generate several iterations of the advertisement from the same base content.
Like dynamic search ads, DCOs are display ads that rely on your creative assets and prospective customer data to automatically create, display, and test an ad in real time.
Keep your content fresh, exciting, and likely to be clicked by audiences most interested in that topic.
DCOs help improve programmatic ROI by;
- Opportunity to create hyper-segmented audiences.
- Using real-time data from DCO, creative management platform (CMP), and DMP to;
- Target audience
- Create personalized ads
- Live test ad performance and improve copy
6. Experiment With Ad Formats
AI and ML have made it possible to develop innovative and exciting ad creatives in less time and with less effort.
With the hassle of traditional media buying out of the way, you can focus on experimenting with different ad formats to tell a story through your ads.
Audiences on some channels may prefer videos, while on others, native ads could generate more engagement and conversions.
Test out different ad formats and creative strategies for a smaller audience. Try out how they work out for different device types (mobile, tablet, laptop)
Consider the user experience, preferences, and data-driven insights to choose your ad formats.
Where applicable, integrate tools into your workflow to perform A/B testing for conversion rate optimization.
Use the performance KPIs, input from A/B testing, and historical and DMP data to optimize your marketing efforts at scale.
A well-crafted, attention-grabbing ad campaign shown to the right audience can drive user engagement and conversions, maximizing your programmatic advertising ROI.
7. Efficient Frequency Caps
You want to reach your audiences without risking overexposure. Frequency caps allow marketers to limit the number of ads shown to specific users in a given time frame.
Repetitive advertisement can outstretch your ad spend without producing results (lower ROI), and make the viewers lose interest.
Frequency capping measures the number of impressions, views, and time frame in which an ad is shown to a single viewer to ensure it stays within the limit.
Instead, the ad managers can switch to showing ads to a different user to keep them interested.
It is important to note that there is no fixed formula for ad frequency capping. Consider the following for choosing frequency caps for your campaigns;
- Demographic and psychographic considerations
- Campaign goals
- Type of channel (social media/website/email)
- Customer journey (top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel)
Using an effective ad frequency cap ensures your marketing campaign has a better reach without causing wasted ad spend, resulting in higher ROAS and ROI.
8. Optimize Media Across Channels
Optimizing your programmatic ads on a micro level is crucial, but it is far more important to remember that the individual pieces make a bigger picture.
Your focus is to drive conversions. Channels have different contributions to driving overall engagement, conversions, and sales.
Social media generates more engagement, but email marketing and search engine marketing take the cake for conversions.
Build a workflow based on the customer journey to optimize media across channels.
A combination of email and SMS marketing, targeted ads, and effective retargeting, such as sequential messaging, can help you drive better conversions and maximize ROI in programmatic advertising.
9. Protect From Ad Fraud
Programmatic advertising, beneficial and cost-effective as it is, is at the risk of ad fraud.
An ad fraud is a fraudulent practice of conflating ad performance metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, misrepresenting or hijacking the domain, or ad stacking.
The point of these practices is to obtain financial gain using unfair means. To protect your programmatic advertising campaigns from ad fraud by using reliable ad networks and publishers, ads.txt files are one way to do it.
Other measures you may implement at the campaign design stage include setting up clear KPIs and monitoring them routinely to detect any anomalies, using ad verification and fraud detection tools.
Benefit from the collective knowledge of all stakeholders by collaborating with various industry experts to identify ad fraud and implement preventive measures.
Conclusion
Maximizing ROI in programmatic advertising refers to implementing the best practices and strategies to increase the profit generated by programmatic advertising.
We list eight strategies for maximizing programmatic advertising ROI.
First, unify your user data. It means integrating your primary data with the data management platform and DSP data to create a unified picture of your user.
Second, unify all your programmatic advertising analytics to find a comprehensive picture of your ad performance.
Third, use the data used for and generated by monitoring your programmatic ad performance (real-time data) to make data-driven decisions about campaigns, ad optimization, targeting and retargeting, ad budgets, and more.
Fourth, keep your ad creative fresh by routinely using new ad copies, creating several iterations of ads, and rotating ad creative.
Fifth, use dynamic creative optimization, an AI and ML-powered technique that automatically generates several iterations of an ad from your creative asset to display personalized ads to viewers.
Sixth, experiment with ad formats. Rely on big data, A/B testing, and ad performance KPIs to identify the formats (videos, banners, etc.) that work for you.
Seventh, apply efficient frequency caps on your ads to avoid overexposure to the audiences and wasted ad spend.
Finally, the eighth strategy is to optimize ads across channels to ensure you maximize ROI in programmatic advertising.
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