Still not sold on programmatic? Let’s discuss the role of people-based data in solving issues related to trust and transparency.

Once upon a time, the ad industry was working overtime to educate agencies and brands about the benefits and power of programmatic advertising. 

Today, it seems like the only important conversation left to have is why some agencies or their clients have not taken advantage of programmatic. 

By all measures, programmatic is dominating ad purchases. It now comprises a whopping 88% of display impression buys. 

Programmatic strategies are often designed to supplement direct ad campaigns to efficiently broaden reach or hit specific audience targets. 

Not everyone is sold on programmatic

If programmatic is proven to be effective and cost-efficient, why aren’t more agencies and brands taking advantage of it? Well, a big part of the equation is trust. In fact, 42% cite lack of transparency in programmatic as a top challenge. 44% are wary of ad fraud and almost half (46%) worry about brand risk (i.e., not knowing exactly what publisher or piece of content the brand will appear alongside). 

It hasn’t helped that even as programmatic has matured and reached mass adoption, we continue to see headlines about faulty measurement or wasted spend. 

Yet, programmatic as a concept truly remains a perfect fit for virtually any brand or agency. So how can we address the valid concerns about fraud and transparency? 

By putting people into the programmatic equation. 

People-based strategies for programmatic wins

Programmatic makes it possible to decide specifically who you want to target and place messages only where your audience is engaging. 

BUT…the technology is only as good as the data driving it. And over the years as programmatic has become fairly commoditized, we’ve seen an awful lot of bad data powering campaigns. Of course, quality control issues are bound to surface in an industry that has grown exponentially and welcomed countless players, some of them certainly unscrupulous. 

The considerable drawback of this reality is it scares off otherwise ideal programmatic candidates. 

For agencies out there considering programmatic but concerned about taking the leap. Or those having trouble getting clients over the transparency and trust hump, we believe the answer to the aforementioned concerns is to standardize only on campaigns based on real people. 

Ad waste really hits a high when campaigns run on cookie-based “personas” meant to represent an actual person but in actuality, are nothing more than digital zombies. There could be dozens of different “personas” that actually map back to one person. Good luck measuring accurately when you have no idea who from an audience is actually behind an engagement metric. 

People-based approaches solve this problem. Audiences comprising real people don’t have waste. They don’t have the same person represented many times. Reputable data firms offering a people-based approach will also ensure that the underlying data (address, age range, shopping behaviors, etc.) is always up to date. Most importantly, they’ll make sure that every person in the audience has not just given permission to be marketed to but has proactively opted in to receive ads. 

Why is people-based data the key to solving trust and transparency issues? For the simple reason that question marks and head scratching goes out the door when you’re dealing with real data sets and real engagement. Zero guessing games mean every metric that matters is measured accurately. Therefore, every dollar spent goes toward reaching exactly the right audience with the right message at the right time. No waste. 

Suddenly, programmatic markets that allow you to bid on high-quality inventory at fair market pricing to reach specific audiences begin to sound more appealing than ever. Agencies can be confident that they are providing a valuable, viable, and trustworthy service and brands can see firsthand the impact of using high-quality data in programmatic campaigns. 

Wait, there are still those upstart costs, right? 

It’s true, there was a time when agencies that wanted to offer a full programmatic service to clients had to invest big time. They had to hire the right people, license databases, buy a seat on an exchange and then carefully craft a business model that allowed them to actually turn a profit. 

This is still the working model for some agencies today. But much like everything else in tech, programmatic can also be turnkey via a managed service approach. What Zoom did for virtual conferencing or Google did for enterprise apps, there are firms today that can provide all of the infrastructure and guidance you need to get started with programmatic, with no upfront costs and no requirement for specialized teams to manage the process. 

It has never been easier to introduce programmatic into your offerings and begin taking advantage of all that it can offer to you and your brands. 

Data firms like BRIDGE have been hard at work for years taking complexity and uncertainty out of the equation to help companies of any size get started quickly and reap the rewards. 

How can we help address your programmatic concerns and kickstart a successful campaign today? Tell us here.