Top Four Tips for Retailers Requiring Effective Programmatic Advertising

At this year’s Cannes Lions Festival, where MediaMath is the headline sponsor of the new two-day event, Lions Innovation, our CEO and Founder Joe Zawadzki will take to the stage with Australian national retailer Coles to discuss their programmatic journey. Specifically, they will confer about the brand’s ProgrammaticFirst™ approach to marketing – a commitment by marketers to drive more relevant, targeted, and real-time engagement with consumers by applying a programmatic marketing operating system across all of their marketing efforts. This helps to achieve the utmost in transparency and drive true business outcomes.

To mark our countdown to the event, and our speaking session with Coles, “Proceed to Programmatic: A Data-Driven Success Story,” our retail expert Edwin Lee shares his top 5 tips for effective programmatic advertising.

Retailers increasingly have access to a wealth of information on their customers, from first-party databases to third-party data to transactional data. Even though many recognise its value, a large number are failing to use it effectively to influence key “moments of truth” in the customer journey.

Consumer expectations for personalised communications, that target them at an individual level, are undeniably high. With this in mind, retailers need to make sure they have effective targeting in place to successfully deliver engaging experiences. If they only satisfy, or fail to reach even that benchmark, they run the risk of losing customers to rivals who are more adept at exceeding people’s expectations. With 88% of UK marketers planning to increase or maintain their current marketing budgets in 2015, retailers have a huge opportunity to establish cohesive and meaningful experiences with programmatic marketing. The findings, part of a State of Marketing Report issued by Salesforce, also found that 86% of senior-level marketers believe it is now critical to “create a cohesive customer journey across all touchpoints.”

Programmatic technology is a great way for retailers to achieve precision throughout their customer interactions. Put simply, programmatic allows marketers to identify and target consumers with relevant advertising that helps them find products they are most interested in, at the very moment they’re ready to buy.

So how can you leverage its potential to positively influence the customer journey? Here are Edwin’s top tips for retailers wanting to invest in an effective programmatic solution:

1. Own your data

Data is, and should always be, treated as your biggest asset. When the customer interacts with your brand on or offline, you’ll be able to gain greater insight into their expectations, preferences and real-time behaviours. This information is vital to shaping your activity.

Consumers may be increasingly willing to share their data, but they need to know it’s being used and stored securely, and that they are going to get value in return for sharing their information. This means adding something to their lives. If consumers see that a brand is targeting them with a product they are interested in, they are more likely to buy.

Retailers need to make sure they protect these assets and retain 100% control of them. This provides protection against growing concerns of data leakage, and safeguards the image of the brand.

If consumers can be confident that their data is protected they will not only embrace your advances in the programmatic space, they will trust you with more of their data, which you can use to further shape the experiences you deliver to them.

2. Connect siloed data in a meaningful way

In order to capture customers when they are most likely to buy, you need to ensure you know who they are and understand why they behave in a certain way. To do that you need make sure that all your first-party data is combined in one holistic data management system that also houses third-party data, and information available through premium publishers. If you know someone has been browsing your website for a particular product, but not gone through the full transaction process, there is probably a valid reason. Understanding that reason and then serving that person with a targeted ad not only enriches their online experience, irrespective of the device they are browsing on, it also increases your brand’s presence – ultimately influencing the end sale.

3. Transparency into media performance

Consumers will never be totally device or channel loyal, so retailers need to ensure they are fully abreast of which channels are performing well and whether or not they need to adapt their approach to respond to the changing behaviours and expectations of their audience. If they don’t, consumers may be presented with a disjointed experience.

4. Programmatic and creativity: Better together

The new era of (online) advertising is the amalgamation of technology and art. Ultimately, digital advertising requires both creativity and data-driven insight in order to be truly effective. Retailers that invest in programmatic technology are therefore able to marry data and creative, art and science. This allows them to vary their messaging to engage with specific audiences, at specific points in the consumer’s path to purchase. Unlike paid search, which is based on particular keyword searches, programmatic combines and activates valuable audience and media data in order to drive conversions that align to marketer’s goals.

If you are attending Cannes Lions, MediaMath and Coles will present “Proceed to programmatic: A Data-Driven Success Story” Thursday 25th June at 3.25pm at The Experience Stage. Want to attend the session? Contact us for more information, and learn more about MediaMath Retail here.