7 Most Effective Types of Programmatic Ads

Capturing the attention of audiences in today’s digital age is anything but easy. There are millions of websites, applications, and digital properties across channels evolving each day, every day. The advertising industry is more digitalized now and is moving towards a programmatic future, which is faster, more accurate, and performance-driven. 

Understanding  Programmatic Advertising

Before programmatic advertising, advertisers would send their ads to publishers to add them to their websites. But with programmatic advertising, the platform uses algorithmic software to serve advertisements to the users at the right place, time, and price. Programmatic advertising is understood only as an automated process of buying and selling online ad space. But in reality, it is much more than that. Before understanding the different channels of programmatic advertising and their examples, here’s more about what programmatic ads are.

Let’s Simplify It

The digital marketing space runs on the basis of ad exchanges; advertisers who want to buy ad space on a digital property and publishers who are website owners with digital space to sell. Programmatic advertising is an automated version of buying and selling online advertising. The automation makes the entire process more effective and streamlined and helps advertisers to consolidate their data in one centralized platform. 

When a person visits a webpage, the website owner puts up the ad impression for an auction. Advertisers then bid for the impression and the highest bidder wins the ad impression. The ad is then finally served on the website to the user and conversions happen when the user clicks on the ad. The entire process may seem a little complicated, but a host of analytics and algorithms make the process happen in an instant. 

Channels of Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic ad buying gives advertisers access to a massive inventory of ad space across channels including premium inventory and private marketplaces with high-quality traffic. With programmatic advertising, advertisers can ensure the relevancy of their ads and improve ROIs. Here are the 7 best types of programmatic ads along with their examples that help advertisers engage more audiences and implement more informed advertising strategies.

1. Display Ads

Display ads are a type of visual advertisement that can be placed at various locations on a webpage, like at the header, footer, sidebar of the page, or in-content. Advertisers and publishers work with display network platforms to facilitate the buying and selling of ad spaces. The publishers get revenue based on the clicks and impressions received on the ad, while advertisers receive revenue based on ad conversions. The ads that we often see when we land up on a page are all examples of programmatic display ads.

2. Video Ads

Video ads are one of the most preferred channels of programmatic advertising that is consumed by the user a lot more as compared to other ad formats. Video ads can be further classified into two categories: in-stream ads, and out-stream ads. Examples of programmatic in-stream video ads are videos that are played in the video player itself, like a video ad before a YouTube video. Out-stream video ads are those that appear between online articles or blogs. 

3. Audio Ads

Available on programmatic ad platforms, this type of ad relies on real-time audience data to place ads and utilizes engaging display and video ads to optimize the user experience. Programmatic audio ads are those that we listen to during online music or podcasts. This ad format follows a sponsorship model to place ads and amplify their revenue generation models.

4. Native Ads

Not unlike programmatic display ads, native ads can be served on various platforms or locations on web pages and apps. Some of the programmatic native ad examples include the creatives you see in the form of in-feed units. In-article ads, you may see recommendation widgets, promoted listings, sponsored content, display ads, etc. The basic concept of native ads is to blend with the page’s content so that they look natural and not sponsored. 

5. Social Ads

Social media ads are grabbing more attention nowadays due to strong internet penetration and the fact that the majority of the audiences’ are now present on social media platforms. Social media platforms collect data from users to enhance their targeting capabilities and programmatic social advertising uses this data to decide who will see their ads, the ad frequency, time, format, etc. Also, social ads are not restricted to platform ads and can be displayed on multiple channels.

6. Digital-out-of-home ads

Prior to the internet era, OOH ads used to be a popular medium to display ads on billboards, taxis, bus stops, etc. Thanks to technological advancements, OOH has now got a new dimension to emerge as a new advertising channel for brands and agencies to reach a large audience in a new and engaging manner.

7. Search Ads

To cite an example of this type of programmatic display advertising, when you search for something on a search engine platform, it delivers a mix of organic and sponsored results. Search engines display a sponsored ad when a user enters a keyword that matches the keyword criteria set by the advertisers. Search ads have proved to be one of the most effective and responsive as the results are based on the explicit intent of the user and displayed in a native ad format.

Staying on top of the emerging trends is the key - programmatic ads enable advertisers to make ad choices that have an impact. All that an advertiser needs to do is feed their programmatic solution with information about the campaign, audience, message, and KPIs and the algorithm will do the rest. Programmatic advertising is the present and future of advertising that is efficient, targeted, and scalable!