Programmatic: The Final Frontier for Marketing Agencies

Welcome to our Perfect Programmatic Pairings Series! Programmatic is a complex advertising landscape that requires expertise and an overhead investment, yet when agencies make it work this channel is extremely lucrative. This is the first post in our series dedicated to helping marketing agencies navigate programmatic advertising.

Programmatic is a huge top-funnel marketing opportunity for marketing agencies and their clients. It’s super flexible and can work with various ad formats. Whether it’s eye-catching banners, engaging videos, or even interactive rich media ads, programmatic can handle it all.

Programmatic advertising acts like an ad guru who knows the latest trends and styles that will catch people’s attention. Need another simile? It’s like a chameleon—adapting and blending seamlessly into its surroundings.

Programmatic can appear on websites, mobile apps, social media, video platforms—you name it. It’s everywhere potential customers are hanging out online, ensuring they can’t miss your client’s message. And since customer behavior adapts all the time, so does programmatic advertising.

Unlike Google Ads, where there’s only one big winner, the programmatic ad industry includes small and big tech companies that are addressing each problem emerging across the space. At the same time, the landscape is crowded with many ad tech platforms to select from and wield.

Understanding the Programmatic Landscape

The widespread programmatic landscape includes almost every type of advertising. The tentacles of its real-time buying and placements are increasing their reach every year – up to $300 billion more will be spent on programmatic ads globally in the next four years. Many agencies have tapped into this lucrative channel, but not everyone and there’s good reason for that.

Anyone who has danced with a DSP knows how quickly it can get complicated. In the world of programmatic, ads are purchased in real-time on a CPM (cost per mille) or CPC (cost per click) basis from ad exchanges, DSPs (demand-side platforms), SSPs (supply-side platforms), dynamic creative companies, and other sources. There are approximately 2800 different ad tech providers that agencies can choose from and counting.

And it’s not just the technology that’s complicated. Experienced humans are needed to sift through the thousands of ad tech providers, interpret different sources of previous audience data, and apply the right mix of strategies to get the best campaign results.

After all that, marketing agencies also have to know how the programmatic auction algorithms will make decisions about their client’s ads, and be accountable to the results. Having a deep understanding of programmatic advertising is both difficult for mid-size agencies to achieve, and yet crucial to find success with this channel.

Programmatic Has Been, “And Always Shall Be,” Your Agency’s Friend

Programmatic has become the final frontier for many agencies that haven’t yet had the opportunity to access this lucrative channel. To navigate the ad tech jungle and successfully take advantage of the increasing programmatic opportunities available, agencies should start thinking about pairing up! What does that mean?

In the upcoming blog posts in this series, we’ll tell you that it means pairing up marketing channels, advertising strategies, machines with humans and even unpacking your agency’s advertising business model. Stay tuned for post number two in this series because we are just getting this pairing conversation started!

And if you haven’t had a chance to attend one of our Klever Pairing Parties you should definitely follow us on social media to get an invite to our next event. Check out our latest pairing party in Boston below:

Back To Index