The advertising landscape can feel like an exclusive country club, where just a few people have all the access. Whether it’s Googles control of the paid search ecosystem, or Meta’s control of popular social channels like Instagram and Facebook, to publisher control over traditional advertising like cable TV, print, and billboards – it feels like you have to know someone to get a good deal. And the market has set rates that create significant barriers for small to mid-size companies.
Programmatic advertising is the one area that can level the playing field with an ecosystem built on open access to valuable advertising inventory. The challenge with this ecosystem is that due to the breath of publishers, finding consistent quality can be challenging. But with the right mix of fraud protection, low-cost targeting, and precision targeted placements, programmatic advertising can allow businesses of virtually any size to reach new customers more efficiently and effectively than ever before.
Imagine you place a billboard near a popular highway in your area. The first thing to consider is that you have no idea how many people saw that billboard. The billboard company will give you an estimate on how many cars drove by the billboard and the average number of people in the car. They might use this estimate to set your price, and offer you a deal of $5 CPM ($5 per 1,000 impressions). Well, when you figure that very few drivers are able to read and engage with a billboard, and half of passengers are on their phone while riding in a car, your true CPM might be $15-$20. Then, when you layer in the fact that perhaps less than 50% of the people seeing the billboard fit the profile of your target customer, your cost per 1,000 impressions could exceed $40!
With programmatic advertising, you can control which zip codes your ads are seen in. You can control the type of content you want your ad shown alongside. And further, you can place an animated ad that allows you to tell a compelling story about your brand. And with leading advertisers like Awarity, your CPM might be around $2-$3 with monthly minimums as low as $299/month. This offers an affordable, and highly efficient way for small businesses to build their brand with their desired customer profile. And by scaling spend only to your service area, down to the zip code, this truly allows small businesses to level the playing field vs large corporations that spend a lot more.