Why Retailers Should Embrace Programmatic Solutions For Holiday Campaigns
Tags: Online Advertising, Programmatic, Internet Marketing, Ecommerce, Retail

Retail marketing is one of the most competitive spaces with so many companies competing for customers and advertising impressions; especially during the holiday season. This puts a special emphasis on ensuring that campaigns are successful — including targeting the right messages, to the right audiences, when they’re ready to buy. Further, consumers want messages that are more personalized to their needs. Programmatic buying is the most cost-efficient way to deliver content to target audiences. Many retail marketers, however, are not overly familiar with programmatic and how to use it.

Retailers often look at programmatic and see it as a cheap way to cut corners, but that’s a common misconception. As with any tool, it’s only as powerful as the way you use it. And during the holiday season, the market is especially saturated with retailer campaigns — marketers need to take better advantage of data and use it in real-time to access customers that will actually convert. Here are five reasons why you need to be leveraging programmatic solutions this holiday season.

1. Your competitors are doing it.

Your competitors are investing a lot of money into their holiday campaigns, including RTB (real-time bidding) programmatic buying. In fact, it is estimated that retailers will spend 39.46 billion on programmatic digital display ads in 2018. In our most recent Twitter Live session on holiday marketing, our Director of Client Services Chris Dyer made one thing crystal clear: if you aren’t putting more dollars into your budget as your competitor, “you will be forgotten.”

2. You’ll see solid returns on investment.

Programmatic buying also makes executing a “full-funnel” approach much easier. Full-funnel means using high-funnel (drive awareness) and low-funnel (drive conversions) keywords in paid search and display to improve overall profit and brand awareness. Using keyword search history, retailers can perform advanced behavioral targeting — this allows them to distinguish between the curious and the purchase-ready. The budget can then be focused on these “low-funnel” keywords in paid search, and ad dollars are spent on the “ideal customers” who are actually ready to buy. Data points are then utilized to signal when someone is ready to buy, which is typically beyond standard paid search services within Google Adwords campaign management services.

3. You can take better advantage of all available data.

The amount of available data about consumers is growing. Site visitation data, keyword search data, social engagement, geographical, conversion, third-party behavioral — the list is only getting longer. Marketers have typically targeted audiences via interests or websites a particular demographic tends to browse. Programmatic eliminates the guesswork by targeting websites and platforms that your target audience actually frequents. This gives retailers access to better data, allowing them to track consumers throughout the buying lifecycle. Sophisticated programmatic campaigns target audiences based on aggregate data, including past buying history, search history, interests, age group and other demographic and psychographic information.

4. It’s more cost-efficient over time.



Programmatic removes the human interface and provides direct access to inventory. The cost of each ad impression tends to be significantly cheaper when purchased via programmatic direct buying. In addition, campaign optimization in real-time saves the time needed to wait for the campaign to run it’s course, and the money needed to re-run and optimize the campaign.

5. You’ll see a higher flow of campaign and audience data.

Programmatic is equipped with optimization algorithms that process campaign data and make adjustments to your campaign in real-time. This provides a distinct advantage over traditional marketing practices, especially in cross-channel programmatic campaigns. Real-time optimization means improvement across all types of campaigns, including display, mobile, video and social media.

When it comes to the latest in digital marketing, advertising and programmatic media, we like to stay knowledgeable, not skeptical. Look for posts every week here on our blog! For more information on programmatic services and how we can help you leverage it for your business, call us at (619) 255–0903 or contact us on our website katana.media/contact.