Behavioral Targeting Through Programmatic Advertising Offers Industrial Manufacturers an Edge

The adage, “Half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half,” is no longer an excuse for marketers today. With programmatic advertising, also known as behavioral targeting, industrial marketers have a clearer picture what ads, campaigns, publishers and audiences are the best for their marketing strategies. Below are five reasons to add programmatic advertising as part of your industrial manufacturing marketing mix.

1. Right Audience. Right Time. Right Message.

Finding a niche audience across the Internet is the essence of behavioral targeting. For industrial manufacturers, you know who you want to reach (and more specifically, not reach). You may be after certain ZIP codes based on your distribution network, distributors to stock your line of products, or focused on an SIC code. The end-user may not even be your target. Because industrial manufacturers are so in tune with their customers, marketing dollars should be just as focused. By avoiding a shotgun-blast approach, you can be prescriptive on where and who you send an advertising message.

2. Pay only what you have to with Real-Time Bidding

Behavioral targeting is done programmatically through the open exchange (think about bidding in an auction on eBay). You only pay a penny above the next highest bidder for an ad slot (called an impression) on a participating publisher website. You set a max bid on the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for your programmatic ads, and you win a percentage of the available online auctions for impressions. This method of buying digital advertising opens up opportunities for efficiencies in media buys.

3. Eliminate Waste through Frequency Capping

By limiting the frequency in which users see your advertising, you create a better user experience if they are interested in what you have to offer. Don’t annoy your target audience. Finding the right number of times to target audiences is up to your discretion. However, if a user is not engaged with your product or service, find some other user who is more interested in your message. Move on to another prospect.

4. Prospecting for Audiences in Alternate Locations

Industrial manufacturers know their industry publications. These trade journals are tried and true, but behavioral targeting follows the users wherever they may be online. Because behavioral targeting is cookie-based, the target audience sometimes is found in unexpected places. You may discover that the publication you thought was the best is mediocre compared to another publication that generates more conversions, better engagement, or higher performance. Regular comparison of the key performance indicators may show new and better publications for advertising.

5. Bargain Prices Don’t Mean Low-Quality

Publishers want to sell all of the available inventory (ad slots) on their web pages each month. If their sales force can’t sell everything through direct I/Os, they make the inventory available on the Open Exchange as “remnant” inventory. Consider the following example:

A. You reserve a hotel room directly with Hilton for $300/night

OR

B. You reserve the same room online via a booking site for $150/night

If you know where to go to reserve a hotel room, you can get a pretty sweet deal that saves some considerable money for the same offering. The same logic is true with remnant inventory. You can get the same publisher impressions reaching the same users for fractions of the cost you would get from a publisher’s rate card.