How programmatic adapts to new technologies.
Programatic advertising is constantly evolving to provide new options to advertisers and also offer a better user experience.
New technologies allow advertisers to take advantage of the new formats and media to reach their target audience in different ways.
As we've seen in other posts, the benefits of programmatic advertising - both for brands (segmentation capabilities, lower costs, etc.) and publishers (easier ad space trading for their unsold inventory). But, apart from that, programmatic is starting to be used in new channels, taking advantage of the new trends and offering more opportunities for advertisers to reach their audience.
These are some of the new media available in programmatic advertising:
Let's take a closer look at each of them.
01 Videogames.
It's possible to use the designated spaces within a game to serve programmatic ads. This way, advertisers can reach their target audience in a less intrusive way.
The videogame industry is constantly growing. In fact, according to the Spanish Videogame Associaton, this market reached record numbers in 2018, with a growth of 12,6% and a 1.530€ million profit.
Globally, there are more than 2,5 billion gamers worldwide (Techjury). And, despite the common belief, these have very different profiles. Following an article by Business of Apps, almost half of the gamers are women, and 70% of the total are 18 and older (being 34 the average age). On the other hand, their interests also differ: 56% likes to draw or sing, 32% plays an instrument and 59% is socially engaged. Also, an important fact is that heavy gamers -who play 10 hours or more weekly- spend 6 times more on media and entertainment than non-gamers.
When using programmatic advertising to serve in-game ads it's possible to offer a more realistic experience, while segmenting the gamer audience. Apart from this, advertisers can get vauable information about their campaign performance: amount of time the ad was seen or the angle it was seen from, and if there was some element from the game partially blocking it.
An example of this is the campaign done by Samsung, who used RTB to launch their new smartphone (more information on this in Reason Why).
02 Podcasts and audio.
The consumption of audio is also increasing, specially with podcasts. According a report from the Reuters Institute, 41% of the Spanish Internet users access this type of content monthly. On the other hand, almost half of them listen to online radio (El Publicista).
Audio ads can be managed using a DSP. This way, radio stations and streamig services (such as Spotify or Soundcloud) can seel their ad inventory through programmatic advertising. For advertisers, this brings new possibilities to segment their audience and offer more relevant content.
For this type of ads there's a standard format called VAST, that makes it possible to serve lineal ads (this is, audio ads that appear before, during or after a pause in the content). As indicated by ClearCode, this type of ads can be complemented with other ads:
- Companion ads: display ads that are shown at the same time as the audio ad.
- Ad pods: slots for one or more audio
- Skippable ads: pre-roll or mid-roll ads.
03 DOOH.
Digital Out of Home also has many advantages for advertisers (read more about this topic on this post). This digital outdoor advertising is the media tha registered a higher growth in Spain in 2019 - a 16,9% more compared to the previous year (according to a report made by Arce Media and Media Hotline and published on IPMark).
Advertisers can choose in which places they want to show their ads, what days, what times, depending on a specific weather, etc. Also, thanks to geolocation is possible to do double-screening (i.e., make users see the ad on their smartphones and on DOOH).
As any other digital format, DOOH offers valuabe metrics for advertisers. For example, in drive-to-store campaigns, it's possible to know the amount of people who saw the ad and entered the store or visited the website.
04 Smart speakers.
We already mentioned on out post about the programmatic advertising trends that 7% of the homes in Spain posee un altavoz inteligente (cifra que llega al 21% en Estados Unidos). Estos dispositivos son utilizados para una gran variedad de cosas, siendo una de ellas la realización de voice search one of them. This offers new opportunities for advertisers to enter their target audience's homes.
When a user makes a search, the programmatic ads will appear in better ranking positions - something that's already being done in the United States.
Also, there are new technologies that allow us to take these smart speakers to other places different from home. This is the case for the Amazon Echo Auto,a device for the car that gets connected to the Alexa APP. Therefore, it's possible to do the same things as an Echo speaker but in the car. Moreover, it lets users to connect other smart devices or even home automation.
Programmatic advertising is a very efficient way to buy and sell ad space. As we've seen, it's being used in new channels to provide new opportunities to advertisers. Thanks to its characteristics, it's possible to offer more relevant and personalized ads, improving user experience.
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