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Programmatic Advertising

What is programmatic advertising?

It is the automated buying and selling of digital media.

You define your target audience, match an ad to that, set a budget, and let the computers do the rest.

The scope of programmatic

In the past, an advertiser who wanted to reach an audience had to

Big publishers demanded more money, small publishers had very little leverage.

Landscape started to change when advertising tech tracked user behavior with cookies, and devices identifier. Large Databases allowed to associate a device to an internet user that matched certain criteria. Once systems could see what websites a user browses, and create a profile, Ads target the person, not the website.

Instead of building massive campaign on few websites with the hope the target audience would see it, advertisers can now target audience based on demographic or online activity.

This benefits all parties involved.

Advertisers can target people that fit their profile, and make changes in real-time.

Publishers can monetize by showing ads, and small publisher don't have to compete

No more contract or negotiations, but a system of biddings and payouts.

This is programmatic advertising

Where does Data come from?

Internet users have digital fingerprints.

HTTP protocol is the hyertext transfer protocol.

When computer requests file online, there is an exchange in place:

This happens for every page, image, file of the page. This process repeats 10-20 times on a single page.

The purpose is to ensure proper delivery of the page to the computer.

This is useful for analytics for website owners. Cookies enable users to create accounts and have preferences.

With the aid of databases that keep and update millions of records, third parties access this data protocol through online trackers, cookies and advertising systems.

Results is massive databases with information of what people do online.

Data and behavioral Targeting

Programmatic is the process of buying and selling digital media in an automated fashion

The most common programmatic system is search engine ads (Paid Search Ads):

The ads are targeted and depend on the search keyword you used

Programmatics take this to the next step: it targets ads on search terms, browsing behavior and content of pages you read. When people see behaviorally targeted ads, CTR is 600% higher than non-targeted ads.

Data has to be gathered to reach this level of personalisation: through first-party sources, like

or through third-party sources, like

These track millions of users and associate the data to the browsers digital fingerprint.

Data is collected, stored and analysed to create user segments. From these segments, audiences are created: like travelers or health and fitness

Then advertisers create campaigns to match these audiences based on behavioral profiles.

Programmatic ads are not just static media ads: they are interactive media, videos and more.

By matching message to audience based on browsing history and interests, advertisers create more effective campaigns.

Programmatic advertising and first-party data

A critical aspect is respect of people's data and preferences. Handling of data must comply with local and global regulations. There are three types of data:

  1. First party data. Data gathered from
    • your website
    • your campaigns
    • your contacts and customers
    • your CRM
  2. Second party data. Someone else's first party data, sold or published. Gathered from
    • Partnerships
    • Shared campaigns
    • co-operative campaigns
    • someone else's first party data
  3. Third party data. Non identifying data aggregated from multiple sources

In Programmatic Advertising, the main source of third-party data is the Data Management Platform (DMP)

GDPR defines how to use third-party data

First-party data yields the highest ROI; it is more accurate and more in depth. Cookies are safe.

Third-party data will become more difficult to obtain, less reliable and more restrictive because of privacy concerns.

Retarget in programmatic marketing

Some key concepts:

Audience: defined by targeting criteria. For programmatics, criteria can be

Creative: what will be shown to the audience. It can be

In creating the campaign the advertiser develops the creative and defines which creative will be used where, and how to target the audience.

Bidding (payment): the campaign parameters define the cost of reaching the audience. Bidding refers to

Automation Platform: the engine that makes it happen. In search ads, it's Google Ads or Bing Ads. This is the system the advertisers use to reach their audience across multiple websites and publishers.

Search engine ads are programmatic, and so is retargeting: if you add something to the basket and don't check out, you will see that product in an ad in the next few days. One of the easiest programmatics to develop.

Retargeting: User browses a website that serves cookies. Cookies record activity of the user

The campaign is executed through an advertising platform like Google, Facebook of Advertising Exchange

Dealing with Ad Fraud

IVT is invalid traffic: a third of online traffic is bots, which invalid the advertising effort. A publisher could use bots to inflate their traffic and make more revenue.

Malware in ad fraud opens thousands of browsing window of the victim browser, using the victim cookies behavior to mimic a bot and drive more traffic to fraudulent websites, reporting verified ad views. That's why malware slow down computers.

To mitigate ad fraud, we start small and build detection:

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