Trends

Efficiency Leads the List of Real-Time Bidding’s Lures

With its ability to match ad-inventory supply and demand in real time against the attributes of any given viewer,real-time bidding is starting to make its way into the delivery of mobile ads.

For marketers, it can be a very good thing. When it works as it is supposed to, it makes mobile marketing more efficient and cost-effective, Chia-Lin Simmons, vice president of marketing and content at Harman International, told CRM Buyer. That is how it works for online purchases and, at bottom, there is very little difference in the pure mechanics of how RTB works between the two.

“Yes, there are differences in pricing, ad units, expected ROI,” Simmons explained, “but at the end of the day, the purchasing and selling of advertising is a marketplace, and anything that produces efficiencies is key.”

‘More Precise and Efficient’

In fact, efficiency is just the start of the benefits of RTB, although these are significant enough that they are worthy of some detail, suggested Victor Milligan, chief marketing officer at Nexage.

Simply put, RTB offers efficiency to both sellers and buyers, Milligan told CRM Buyer: “It enables sellers to simplify their ad tech stack and operations while maintaining the same — or better — levels of liquidity, and allows buyers to be substantially more precise and efficient in targeting.”

From that point, the ROI story just gets better, Milligan continued.

“RTB and programmatic buying enable publishers, buyers and agencies to set up a set of strategic markets that best suit their business needs,” he said.

That can mean any number of different things, depending on the particular party, he added. For instance, it could mean an open market, a first-look or exclusive private exchange, a direct-deal market, or a broader programmatic guaranteed market.

In the big picture, RTB has made the markets more flexible, and that is a worthy value-add in itself, Milligan said.

Imposing Order on Chaos

RTB can also impose some order on the Wild West that is mobile marketing, saysSociomantic CEO Jason Kelly.

“With so many different device types, screen sizes, operating systems, browsers and SMS, in-app, location-based ads and so on, it’s a much more chaotic advertising world than on desktops,” Kelly told CRM Buyer. “Mobile RTB is one area where advertisers can impose some order on this chaos.”

There are three ways that is done, he said: pricing, personalization and campaign type.

One, marketers can benefit from the efficiency of impression-by-impression pricing, according to Kelly.

“The chance to bid on cookie-less inventory like iOS Safari where there is little competition at the moment gives advertisers a fantastic opportunity to reach their customers with highly efficient pricing,” he explained.

Two, personalizing the media experience allows advertisers move into the environment that users have created for themselves on their mobile devices, he said.

“Dynamic ad personalization lets marketers capture all of the mobile eyes and turn them into buys,” Kelly said. “Many sell-side platforms are opening up new flash-less inventory, serving dynamic HTML5 banners, giving marketers even more opportunity for personalization.”

Finally, mobile RTB opens the opportunity for advertisers to build customer loyalty on mobile through specialized campaigns targeted through advanced CRM segmentation.

Erika Morphy has been writing about technology, finance and business issues for more than 20 years. She lives in Silver Spring, Md.

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