In today’s world of programmatic ads, about 20% of the ad revenue is contributed by programmatic displays. Currently valued at about USD 10 Billion, this segment is slated to triple in about five years, as more and more companies are investing in this area. However, like most fledgling industries, most companies are still struggling to get grips on Programmatic Advertising. The problems are a plenty.
1. Where do I start analyzing the bid log reports?
2. Most of my reporting today exists in excel sheets, how do I make sense of it?
3. How do I identify my target segments?
4. Once identified, how do I make sure that I am hitting the current audience?
5. Impressions are alright but am I reaching out to the intended target?
Let us start with the first things first, what do we want from an advertising campaign? The answer is simple, Conversions . That is the only thing that will ensure that all stakeholders in the programmatic display get their money’s worth. To them the most important thing is to hit the right segments.
However, identifying the right segments is only a part of the story, how does one ensure that they are hitting the right segments? What is required is a thorough analysis of the campaign reports. That’s where our story starts.
Unfortunately, most of the reporting today is still trapped in excel sheets and documents which makes any analysis cumbersome. A recent analysis by marketingland.com states that as high as 42% of DSPs still get their bid request data in attached spreadsheets, which makes any post-hoc analysis nearly impossible. All this data in log files, documents, excel sheets if processed, can unlock volumes of information about how the campaigns are performing and whether or not one is getting the desired results.
Thus any reporting tool that can allow ad-hoc analysis on reports would go a long way in extracting the most out of campaigns. A campaign manager with a few clicks can, not only identify how his campaign is performing, but get additional information like how well is he connecting with his target audience, which country is he connecting with, what is the average age of the viewers, which sites is resonating best with his campaign, which devices are resulting in the impressions, which creative campaign is resulting in most clicks, etc. He can also share this information with the advertisers in a secure view so that they can pull out this information whenever they want. Thus cutting down on communication back and forth and giving more time to optimize the ad campaigns. After all, the advertiser who is paying per impression would also want to know whether these impressions are also reaching out to their intended targets.
In short, a well designed a reporting tool that could ingest all the logs and present to campaign managers a rich summary of the campaigns and allow them to slice and dice through the data would go a long way in realizing the true potential of programmatic ad campaigns.
