Blog Ask CI: What Is Programmatic Expansion?

Ask CI: What Is Programmatic Expansion?

AUTHOR: Capacity Interactive

Sep 16, 2024

4 Min Read

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Let’s level with each other: “programmatic” is a marketing buzzword that has been thrown around for the last decade, but even savvy marketers don’t always know how to define it. Simply put, programmatic advertising means buying/serving ads, across digital channels, based on behavioral data, as opposed to based on placement or context.

Behavioral example: people who have a certain set of interests based on their browsing data, or people who have previously visited your organization’s website
Contextual example: people reading an article about the arts, or people living in a certain set of zip codes
Placement example: any reader on nytimes.com

Most of the marketing you may already be doing across channels like Google is, by definition, programmatic! And though it does not check the multi-channel box in the same way, marketing on social platforms like Meta is certainly behavioral. For many years, CI emphasized these channels as top priorities for arts organizations, since they were particularly cost-effective and had particularly wide reach. Our motto was (and is!), “Be where the eyeballs are.”

However! The digital landscape is always changing. Enter: what we have started calling “programmatic expansion.”

WHAT DOES PROGRAMMATIC LOOK LIKE BEYOND GOOGLE?

For context, let’s quickly revisit this chart from Which Google Channel Is Right For Me?:

As a programmatic platform, Google provides a number of different ad formats and placements, and the optimal mix of those is very dependent (and customizable) on an organization’s priorities, budget, and available creative assets.

Programmatic expansion–or, adding reach and channel diversification via large aggregators of inventory other than Google–is similar. If you have more budget and really want to create signposts across the internet (and even the physical world) for your organization, a media plan that includes programmatic expansion is omnichannel by definition and could include:

Premium Display: reaching people on premium website publisher networks that are not accessible via Google
Connected TV (CTV): reaching people consuming content on smart TVs (channel agnostic and serving across different streaming services, YouTube, etc.)
Digital Out of Home (DOOH): reaching people via digital billboards based on time of day and/or location (e.g. NYC subway platforms at pre-theater rush hour around Times Square)

Additional tactics available through programmatic expansion that we don’t have with Google or Meta: email domain targeting, geo-fencing (serving ads to users when their mobile devices are within a specific area, e.g. serving an ad for San Francisco Opera when a person is in the Civic Center/Haye Valley area), and mobile device lookback (targeting folks based on where they were in the past, e.g. anyone who has been in Lincoln Center within the last month).

WHO IS A CANDIDATE?

For large-scale investment: organizations with high marketing budgets and strong, high-resolution video assets.

For experimentation: pretty much anybody!

There aren’t necessarily spending minimums here, so it’s worth thinking about where you could pull from or replace existing media spends in other areas to test out programmatic expansion.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

CPM: While Google campaigns typically use a CPC (cost per click) pricing model, programmatic expansion typically uses a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) pricing model–and CPM will trend higher than Meta/Google for programmatic expansion, reflecting the higher quality of placements.
Conversion tracking: Conversion tracking is available within the omnichannel structure of programmatic expansion, so you can get a sense of actual comparative results with these investments.
Customization: No marketing mix is one-size-fits all. Investing in programmatic expansion means investing in a strategic partnership that will result in a plan custom-made for your organization’s needs.

WE’RE HERE TO HELP!

Heads up: CI offers partnerships in Programmatic Expansion! Get in touch with our Digital Advertising team to learn more about how you can take your marketing mix to the next level.