In the age of data-driven decision-making, automation is becoming more and more important in the ad tech world. There is no escaping from it — automation is the future and ad tech platforms that invest in automation technology are going to become the key players in the industry over the next few years.
Why spend your valuable time reading and analyzing tons of data to make advertising decisions? Instead, advertisers are beginning to use automation tools on advertising platforms to increase engagement, ROI and profits without the need for endless hours building and managing online campaigns.
Automating your online advertising can have a significant impact on your business, since algorithms can optimize your ads to create the best CTR and reduce your CPC with adaptive budget spending.
Ad tech companies provide a range of solutions within their platforms. Once you understand how these tools work you can implement them and it’s like having lots of smart assistants working on your behalf. All you need to do is set the parameters within which your “assistants” should work. And the more such assistants you have, the more you can scale up your campaigns.
There are currently a few different ways that advertisers are automating their online advertising efforts. But here we will talk about two: monetary-based algorithms and algorithms based on ad performance.
Monetary algorithms use revenue and conversion data to automate your advertising based on your revenue and ROI data. For example, if you are running an e-commerce site, your automation for campaigns would be with monetary-based algorithms that analyze the sales and conversion data from your campaigns. The algorithm would use this data to increase or decrease bids on campaigns that are dependent on their monetary performance. If your ad campaign is generating more sales for your e-store, the algorithm will automatically increase bids on that campaign to reach the target ROI you have set.
Algorithms based on ad performance center on the strength of your ad campaigns, using data gathered from the campaigns you are currently running. These algorithms optimize the best campaigns and block or pause low performing ads and ad zones. These types of algorithms are usually controlled by rules. For example, you could set up rules that say, “If my ad gets a CTR lower than one percent after showing 20,000 impressions, then turn it off.” This type of automation can really save you time checking all the ad zones that are performing well or underperforming, if you have a good set of rules in place.
Automating your online advertising can have a significant impact on your business, since algorithms can optimize your ads to create the best CTR and reduce your CPC with adaptive budget spending. Beyond running full-blown campaigns, this is also extremely useful for running test budgets, allowing the algorithms to test your campaigns first before making that big investment. That way, you and/or your team don’t have to worry about manually analyzing, stopping and pausing campaigns — the algorithm does it all for you. Not only does it save you money on campaign spending, it also saves you money on staff costs that you would have normally paid to manually carry out the work of the algorithm.
Time is the other great benefit. Firstly, if all this optimization was being done manually, an employee might be having a coffee or lunch break, or sleeping while a night campaign is running. At that critical moment that they are not there, a campaign could be losing money, but the algorithm is always present, optimizing for you. And there is another great benefit with time — the algorithms free up your time and your team’s time so you can all focus on other aspects of your business. This could include more creative time for devising campaigns, strategic planning, business development, etc.
The future of automated advertising is very exciting and ad networks need to ramp up their technology in order to provide tools for this market shift.
Giles Hirst is head of communication at ExoClick, an online advertising company which provides two channels for advertisers and publishers — its Ad Exchange and Ad Network.