The Key To Programmatic Success: Don't Overdo It

Digital advertising is a practice that many roll their eyes at, even if they acknowledge the practical need for it and the massive demand for it across industries. Innovations in advertising and marketing are usually met with applause from those within the industry and--sadly--groans from just about everyone else.

People enjoy products, but they don’t enjoy being told to buy them. 

It’s not difficult, then, to see how programmatic advertising over the last few years has been met with cheers from industry professionals and jeers from the general public. People are quick to latch onto the idea that marketing is only about convincing people to spend money, and some advertisers only serve to confirm this assumption by practicing overly aggressive ad serving tactics, using the latest technological capabilities to serve as many ads to as many people as possible.

This type of thinking only considers the amount of potential clicks that can be gotten and ignores the fact that there is an actual person on the the other end of the screen, a human that probably won’t have a positive reaction to being bombarded with the same ad again and again and again.

It should be noted, though, that the marketing industry as a whole has made amazing strides to accommodate customer preferences. As customers make an effort to avoid blanket advertisements, marketers are turning to more content-driven methods of promoting brands and services, such as native advertising or sponsoring online celebrities. These tactics have worked to make the marketing process much less intrusive and much more engaging.

Similarly, programmatic technology is helping to make advertising more responsive and engaging, but in the rush for greater efficiency and increased brand awareness, it can be easy to go overboard. The technology allows for marketers to pinpoint extremely specific aspects about customers so that brands can provide them with ads that are relevant to their lives, but the application of the technology can walk the line between relevant and creepy.

For the average customer, crossing that line often happens very quickly.

Turn, for example, recently came under fire for allegedly using “zombie cookies” that retargeted ads to users even when their cookies had been deleted. Even if the zombie cookies weren’t actually used, the issue came from users getting fed up with the amount of retargeted ads they were receiving and then looking for malicious intent behind them.

More often than not, people can be pushed over the edge when they see the same ad in multiple places across different sites in a short amount of time. It's a valid argument to say that an ad with great content will win over skeptics, but the fact is, if you see the same ad five times in two minutes, you’re going to feel like it’s stalking you. Even if you’re being offered a great deal that you end up taking advantage of, the deal itself won’t be what you remember from the ad experience, the sense of harassment will be.

Of course, this isn’t helped by the fact that when many think of “advertising,” they think of the pushy salesman saying whatever it takes to make a sale. However, that doesn’t alleviate the burden of responsibility on us as marketers.

Conforming to customer desires might seem obvious to some, but to the public, it can be difficult to believe when they’re still carrying around the misconception that marketers only exist to shove ads down their throats. Customers are people, and when they find themselves frequently targeted by the same ad, regardless of whether or not it’s something they want, they will get frustrated. To them, this kind of marketing isn’t treating them as potential buyers, it’s treating them like machines where you put in the right combination and you unlock money.

The programmatic space is undoubtedly expanding at an incredible rate, but the real value as it evolves is to be truly respectful of what customers want. Today, customers are much more empowered than ever before, and if a majority of them begin to associate programmatic with digital stalking and obnoxious pop-ups, they will fight back against the technology.

It’s up to us as marketers and our technologists counterparts to make sure this doesn’t happen, and we can do this by simply putting ourselves in the customers’ shoes. How many times do you want to see an ad before you get fed up with it? What type of ad would you call intrusive? These are simple questions to ask and can go a long way toward ensuring the continued success of programmatic as it becomes increasingly sophisticated and attuned to customer needs.