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Programmatic advertising is here to stay. With advertisers spending roughly $155 billion on programmatic advertising in 2021, you’d agree that programmatic advertising is a huge industry and there are predictions of more growth in the future.
In this guide, you’ll discover 10 programmatic advertising examples to guide you through your journey of digital marketing. Before that, here is a brief history of programmatic advertising.
Programmatic advertising all began with the banner ad in 1994. Yes, there was nothing fancy about the ad but it paved the way to how advertising will be done. As the first ad, lots of people were fascinated by the idea, which resulted in a 40-50% clickthrough rate. That is almost half the people who saw the ad as shown below and clicked on it.
Over the years, technology has evolved, and the world of advertising was not left behind. With the evolution of technology, advertisers bought up more online real estate. Within the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was an upsurge in the number of ad networks in the world. Also, during this time, Google released the renowned Google Ads into the marketplace.
There has been a lot of growth in the world of digital marketing. Today, programmatic advertising pretty much simplifies the cumbersome advertising process. As an advertiser, you don’t need to worry about the little details, the nitty-gritty process that goes into placing ads in digital platforms to maximize conversion. By merely opting for programmatic advertising, everything will be automated for you.
Here comes the big question – what is programmatic advertising? Well, here’s what you need to know.
Programmatic advertising helps in the automation of the buying, selling, and management of digital ads. With programmatic advertising, every digital ads process is automated, and there is also a real-time bidding feature. The automated system helps companies to launch hyper-targeted ads where context, location, and other details are put into consideration.
It’s no news that managing digital ads is hard work. As an ad expert, you’re burdened with the responsibility of choosing the right platform, the ad type, your target audience, the ideal time to run ads, location, and other details. Yes, the list is long – and that would take lots of research, skills, and work.
The good news is, programmatic advertising eliminates all these processes. With the automated system, all you’ve got to do is wait for your result. Be still, and let the result come rolling in – and that’s where the beauty lies.
Moving, you’ve got to figure out if programmatic advertising is effective.
Yes, programmatic advertising is always effective. With programmatic advertising, your ads are always “on’. That means you’d get the most out of real-time ad bidding, regardless of what the optimal time is. Programmatic advertising is a reliable way of diving into the minds of your target audience and providing answers to customers’ questions even before they ask such questions.
Now you’ve got a good grasp of what programmatic advertising is, here are 10 programmatic advertising examples.
Here are ten programmatic advertising examples to help you get started in your journey of online marketing.
In 2004, Google was on a quest to promote their Google Search App. Fortunately, they discovered the power of programmatic advertising in the process. Yes, their ad campaign reached 30% more people. Also, they recorded a 30% lower cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), and about a 50% boost to their awareness.
In 2014, Google fully adopted programmatic advertising in their quest to boost the results of their ad campaigns. As expected, they generated better digital advertising results with the strategy.
Google targeted its most valuable audience members by building its ad targeting using first- and third-party data. The company also takes leverage of the search campaign optimization option to recycle its campaign data, ultimately improving its overall strategy.
Here are some stats that proved the effectiveness of Google’s programmatic advertising.
Get in early. Yes, early adoption gives a good return. Google started using programmatic advertising way back in 2014. As a business owner, you don’t need to wait to try out programmatic advertising. You’ve got to experiment now, be ahead of your competition, and consider programmatic advertising as a viable option.
Just like Google, Kellogg’s started using programmatic advertising in 2014. Their primary objective was to drive offline sales using digital ads. Well, it was a success. With programmatic advertising, they boost their view ability rate by 70-80%. They also recorded 2X to 3X better targeting.
Companies like Kellogg that rely more on offline sales may find it somewhat challenging to use digital advertising. For these businesses, there has to be a connection between an offline purchase and an online ad. To a large extent, that’s why Kellogg focuses more on key performance indicators (KPIs) like frequency and view ability.
View ability pretty much shows if your target audience saw your ad, while frequency shows how often your target audience sees your ads, and how often your preferred ad platform delivers the ad.
With programmatic advertising, Kellogg got the most out of these KPIs. Furthermore, the company boosts its audience targeting by partnering with ad management and ad serving solutions like DoubleClick. The partnership also led to the creation of hyper-targeted ad campaigns – and these campaigns generated good results.
With programmatic advertising, Kellogg could.
Even if you generate sales offline, don’t ignore digital advertising. Nowadays, lots of people spend quality time online. To reach this audience, you’ve got to start an Ad campaign. This way, you get to boost your brand awareness, get more in-store visitors, and boost your overall sales.
As a digital and print publication, “The Economist” generated 650,000 new prospects and a whopping return on investment (ROI) of 10:1.
That’s not all…
They boost their brand awareness by 65%. Their primary objective of trying out programmatic advertising is to persuade reluctant and curious readers to opt for the publication.
Here’s the thing, “The Economist” covers a plethora of topics ranging from technology to finance – and their ad campaign should cover all these audience types. To get started, “The Economist” performed lots of audience research, and from the data obtained, they created audience segments in the following areas.
From these segments, “The Economist” created a lookalike audience. Next, they launched tailored ads that matched the preference of each lookalike audience. For instance, someone interested in technology would see an ad that featured one of the most recent technological trends. “The Economist” created lots of ad versions – about 60 of them and got the results below.
From the programmatic advertising, you’d see that your business gets to generate several ideas from programmatic ads. As a general rule of thumb, you’ve got to learn more about your target audience by using user data and a website. With such information, you would easily create ads that resonate with your target audience and get them to take your desired action.
AirAsia launched some video and display ads that targeted three audience types. The ad campaign was successful with a record of 30X return on ad Spend (ROAS).
The primary objectives of the Facebook Ad campaign were to drive ticket purchases and build brand trust in the marketplace. The primary target audience was the loyal AirAsia customers. Furthermore, they also targeted air travelers who haven’t flown AirAsia since the 2014 plane crash.
The ad creatives were unique as each audience type received a different ad format. Regular AirAsia customers saw an ad that highlighted the airline rates for most frequent routes, while travelers who haven’t used the airline for some time saw a humorous video. Others saw an ad that highlighted the fares of their recently searched trips.
All in all, the campaign generated some fascinating results.
If you want to grow your reach on Facebook, then you’ve got to follow a similar pattern like that of AirAsia. Start by creating audience segments and custom creatives for your audience. This way, you’d easily engage and grab their attention.
Topman is focused on the creation of various khaki collections to fit their various customer styles. They created various ad types to capture their diverse audience types. For instance, Topman photographed outfits that are ideal for extreme fashionistas and some different styles that are ideal for a stylish, casual look. These photos were used by various ad creatives to reach varying audience types. That is, there’s an ad creative that fits every shopper type within their target audience.
The result?
They recorded a successful programmatic campaign.
Like other programmatic advertising examples of some brands, Topman did not reveal the performance of their ad creative to the public. However, there is a thing to learn from the programmatic advertising. First, you’ve got to focus on your Ad creatives, and figure out how to tailor them to resonate with your target audience.
Missing People, a UK charity organization, is focused on finding and reconnecting missing children with their families. They also offer support to the families of missing children. The thing is, the charity has no marketing budget, and raising awareness with such a marketing budget seems to be a big issue.
Thankfully, there’s an advertising inventory donation of $13 million that translates to an effective digital ad campaign. With such inventory, the charity opt for programmatic advertising, utilizing the advanced targeting option.
The charity organization launched location-based ads that showcased the charity’s child rescue system that’s quite similar to the Amber Alert system in the United States. With the ads in place, users get to sign-up for the system – and the result was outstanding.
Within a month, there were about 44,000 responses and sign-ups to the campaign. For context, the system had only about 10,000 people before the campaign was launched, and the go-to promotion was the regular traditional print advertising.
After the campaign, the response rate increased from 50% to 70% – a significant 20% increase.
Regardless of your industry, there are business lessons to gain from this programmatic advertising example. First, you need to consider how location affects your audience and your company. Now the big question is – what’s the best place to advertise to reach your target audience? There are business owners who would choose to advertise within the driving distance of their business, while others would opt to advertise miles away, which may be where their target audience lives.
Amanda Foundation, a non-profit organization chose to use programmatic marketing to increase the adoption of dogs and cats from its facility. The big question came knocking – how could they reach the right people with the ads?
Humans are diverse creatures. Some people love cats, while others love dogs – and Amanda Foundation understands it. Aside from the distinct categories of people, people love various breeds of cats and dogs. You see, there’s no one size fits all here. For instance, someone from a young generation may like high-energy dogs, while an older person prefers low-energy dogs – and that’s where programmatic advertising comes into play.
With programmatic advertising, Amanda Foundation could easily match make people to their right breeds of cats and dogs. The non-profit organization opts for extensive targeting to pinpoint users who prefer cats or dogs, and the breed of cats and dogs.
For instance, a young person with an active life would pair with a Labrador Retriever, while an older person will likely see an ad that highlights a Golden Retriever. Even without a public display of the results of the campaign, the campaign produced a good result. As a result, this programmatic advertising example is always featured during compilations of programmatic advertising.
As a marketer or business owner, you get to learn a thing or two from this programmatic advertising example. First, business owners who offer multiple products (or services) should research their target audience and pinpoint the product (or service) offering that provides the most benefit (or value) to them. These products (or services) will be used to create ad campaigns.
Turner Sports desired to support the National Basketball Association (NBA) Season Tip-Off 2016 events. To do that, they opted for programmatic advertising. The primary objective is to generate more engagement and interest for the program that would be aired on TNT.
Turner Sports launched a programmatic video advertising campaign that generated 6 million unique views across the US. The ads featured real-time video shots of athletes, fans, and other parties across the US. Furthermore, advanced targeting was featured in the ads campaign.
To build the initial audience, the company had to mine data from the previous Google Ads campaigns. Also, they had to analyze the data using the Google marketing platform. This way, they got to pinpoint the most valuable audience segments.
Well, everything fell into place as they recorded some good results.
One of the lessons here is not to settle for your initial audience. Yes, take your audience research a step forward by identifying your most valuable audience – those who would find the most use of your ads.
You can either use your initial audience or take a step forward to pinpoint your perfect audience segment – those who would find your ads most useful. With the perfect audience segment, you get to easily create hyper-targeted ads. This will, in turn, generate better results in the long run.
In a study on how people handle hotel booking, IHG found that a huge number of people use third-party booking sites. Their primary motive is to get the best price. On the flip side, IHG knew that booking directly with the hotels will help the audience save 15 to 30% of the original cost.
Well, with such findings, IHG opts for programmatic advertising.
With programmatic ads, IHG showed the people the cost of booking directly with their hotels. The ads were customized to fit the user’s date, hotel location, and price.
The results?
The ads worked well. After all, they offered transparency to the user, especially when it came to cost. Without losing sweat, the users knew the price of hotel bookings per night, and they got to compare it with the prices on third-party booking sites.
The thing is, these ads were not designed to compel the users. It merely offered transparency when it came to pricing – and the users had to make their choice.
Just like IHG, choosing to be transparent has its perk. You’ve got to be willing to share the price of your product (or service) offering. Next, you’ve got to reveal the time it would take to deliver the product. All in all, you’ve got to give your customers all they need to know about your product (or service) offering.
The online fashion world is highly competitive. Instead of going for some complex campaign strategy, Lacoste settled with the basics. Most brands experience peak performance during the summertime – and Lacoste doubled down on driving sales from three major markets – Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. To generate sales from these markets, they opted for targeted programmatic advertising.
With the use of their customer data, they had to segment their audience. Targeted audience segments, and also launched some retargeting ads using some creative options and placements.
But their secret ingredient was in their persistent use of A/B testing.
The results?
They generated about 20 million brand impressions, and a whopping 2,300 sales across various target markets.
If you desire success in the world of online advertising, then you’ve got to be persistent. Yes, be persistent in your A/B testing – there’s no shortcut here!
Furthermore, you’ve got to be willing to invest in various banner formats, ads, channels, and also tweak and refine your campaigns until you start generating your desired results.
Well, there is no straight clear answer to this. Google Ads is somewhat similar to programmatic advertising in several ways. At least, both Google Ads and programmatic advertising use the auction-based system. Furthermore, both reach their specific audience using display advertising as well.
Yes, Facebook is a kind of programmatic mobile advertising that primarily functions as a social network. Advertising displayed on the platform is not only non-intrusive, but also generates quality results for the advertisers.
Programmatic advertising pretty much involves the use of automated technology for media buying. By now, you probably know that media buying involves advertising space. With programmatic advertising, you don’t have to rely on traditional (or manual) methods of digital advertising. If you desire to buy media with a large audience, then you should consider real-time bidding (RTB). Yes, RTB is cost-effective, and you’d get the most of any penny spent.
With programmatic advertising, you get to buy and sell online advertising space using technology. It would be best if you use real-time bidding to target segmented audiences. This way, your ads get to be delivered to the right people at the right time.
Programmatic advertising is the goldmine in the world of online marketing. Regardless of your industry, your budget, or your primary ad objective, you’d generate quality results using programmatic ads – and these programmatic advertising examples prove just that!
One more thing…
You have to be persistent. There is no easy fix anywhere. But if you follow the business lessons outlined in this guide, you’d be on your way to generating enough results in no time.
What’s next? Your turn!
What business lesson will you be implementing in your next programmatic ad?
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