If you’re running digital video campaigns, your success is based on reaching the right audience. As more and more ad buyers are finding, programmatic video can help make that happen. This technology optimises the buying process, and should give you access to the right inventory for your audience, so you can reach them wherever they are.
Many things have changed in the video advertising industry, but plenty has remained the same. David Cohen, CIO at Universal McCann summed it up perfectly at our latest BrightRoll Video Summit in New York with the point that advertising is still about telling a compelling story.
“Resonating with consumers is your most important goal, no matter how you’re reaching them. But your compelling creative needs to be in the right places, which is why audience targeting is leading the way in advertising campaigns,” he said.
But even as ad buyers increasingly adopt programmatic video, the technology can still seem like magic — powerful and incomprehensible. You have access to the machine that makes the magic happen, but do you truly understand it? To ensure that you’re reaching the right audience, in the most efficient way, you need clear information about the technology you’re using. You also need precise control over the parameters of your campaign, making every penny of your investment count.
When it comes to programmatic video, the technology in question is your demand side platform (DSP). Whether or not you decide to manage your campaign directly through your DSP, you should have complete trust in it. If you cannot verify that your DSP is acting in your best interests, you risk wasting budget, failing to reach your audience, and missing out on revenue.
Ask your technology partner these questions about their DSP. If they can answer “yes” to all of them, only then do you have the control you need to maximise reach.
1. Can I target specific audience segments?
Through your DSP, you should have precise control of who will and will not see your ads. You should be able to base your target on factors like age, gender, location, and interests. You should also have full control over where you get audience segments, be they from your own database or a third-party data provider.
2. Can I control how often my ads are seen?
You should be able to determine not only who sees your video ads, but how often they see them, and which ads they see, even across multiple publishers and devices. This is called global frequency capping. Through your DSP, you will be able to limit how often a viewer sees a specific ad, or multiple ads within a single campaign. This level of control means that you can hit as much of your target as possible without overexposing the audience.
3. Can I track viewers?
This comes hand-in-hand with being able to target specific audience segments. Your DSP should make it clear who is seeing your ads. It should also provide you with insights to help you adjust your campaigns on the fly.
4. Is my audience verifiable?
You need to be absolutely sure that the audience your campaign is targeting is bonafide, and your technology partner should make the process available and simple. Your DSP should help you verify your audience with an independent third party like comScore or Nielsen.
Transparency into and control over your DSP are crucial to success with programmatic video. But transparency and control are important even beyond reaching your audience. You should have transparency into and control over inventory, which means that your vendor is media agnostic, and gives equal preference to all sources of supply. You need a reliable DSP that buys the right inventory at the best price, always acting in your best interests.
By Chris Childs, Brightroll, Yahoo
Originally posted 12 Ahead 24 June 2015