AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Tealium.
Programmatic may have cut its teeth as a direct response medium, but advertisers are also starting to embrace it for upper-funnel campaigns. However, if branding is your goal, the rules of engagement are different.
This week on AdExchanger Talks, we hear from Sarah Warner, digital investment lead for programmatic and video at GroupM. Warner will present on this very topic at PROGRAMMATIC IO New York, taking place October 15–16.
“There is the opportunity to make the internet a very powerful branding mechanism,” Warner says in this episode. “[But] it’s our collective responsibility to make sure we don’t push it too far. And by that, I mean: Are we overserving with the wrong creative on the wrong device with the wrong formats that are obtrusive?”
To avoid missing the mark, brands should deploy a range of tactics, such as enforcing frequency caps by consolidating buys with a smaller number of buying platforms. They should also embrace technology and software to automate what they previously had done through contracts.
The most sophisticated brands in programmatic have already adopted an audience-first approach.
“It’s a matter of finding people that look like your best customers to bring them into the funnel,” Warner says. “There are still a lot of marketers tied to age and gender because it’s a currency of linear, but we’ve seen clients try to change the conversation and change the currency … to focus on a strategic audience.”
