The promise of Programmatic is that we as marketers, can simply upload our campaigns, then 'set and forget' the algorithm to go get us better results.

No more worrying about bids, budgets, conversion rates and CPAs.

Is the Programmic dream really here?

Throughout this year, we've been trialling different Programmatic solutions for both Adwords and Facebook advertising and here's some of our findings that will prepare you for your first three months of Programmatic.

In the first part of this article, we’ll start off with the good news.

#1 Budgets

Lets face it, there are *a lot* of tasks that really are better off being handled by a machine. There’s perhaps no concept in advertising as simple as having a monthly budget.

Yet the reality of regularly adjusting spends across campaigns to balance volume, impressions & conversions at an acceptable CPA is actually not trivial.

Handing budget control over to the algorithm has reduced increased spend accuracy, reduced team miscommunications & oversights (& therefore headaches!) and eliminated this daily wasted time for every client we work on. Win for Programmatic here.   

#2 Bids

With the combination of both historical pattern matching and algorithmic realtime bidding, Programmatic has resulted in far superior account-wide bid management.

It has been remarkable observing the further gains and new insights Programmatic bidding has exposed for even more optimal hours of day, day of week, day of month and device allocations.

Lets face it, this level of budget & bid granularity is impossible for a human to achieve. Another victory for Programmatic here.

Dream time?

Since Programmatic is Budgeting and Bidding for us, better than we can do ourselves, surely the Programmatic dream has finally arrived?

Now we should be able to return our focus back to the higher level questions we should always have been focussed on: marketing, strategy and comms, right? Maybe.

To find out, stay tuned for part two of this article next month!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Sugihto is founder of specialist, Melbourne based Pay Per Click agency and Google Certified Partner, Intentional. Since 2009, the Intentional team have driven online advertising for companies in global markets such as Prague, Paris, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Bangkok, New York and LA; as well as being digital advisor and partner in the Australian domestic market for numerous household brands and NFPs.