Many digital marketers have begun to realize that programmatic advertising is a crucial part of their advertising strategy. However, some may still be uncertain if investing in it is worth it. If that is the case for you, you have come to the right place. 

In this post, you will gain a thorough understanding of the basics of programmatic advertising and all of the advantages it can provide for your business, should you utilize it correctly. 

What is programmatic advertising? 

Put simply, programmatic advertising is a way of buying (and selling) digital advertising space that involves automated technology, an abundance of data, and algorithmic tools. It replaces manual methods and consequently offers greater efficiency, leaving more time for campaign optimization, and better focus on the important metrics relevant for your app or brand. 

How does it work? 

Programmatic advertising uses a platform like a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) and Supply-Side Platform (SSP) that allows buyers and sellers to interact and buy/sell ad slots in the blink of an eye, almost without any human interference. 

Real-time bidding (RTB or Open RTB) describes media buying via open auction in real-time. In this automated auction, all advertisers can participate, and the highest bidder wins the ad placement. Private Marketplace (PMP) works similarly to RTB, but advertisers must receive an invitation from the publisher to join the closed auction. Programmatic advertising platforms guarantee is a form of programmatic direct advertising where a fixed price and specific inventory are agreed upon in advance, but the advertiser isn’t obliged to purchase it. With Preferred deals, a fixed price and specific inventory are prearranged between the advertiser and the publisher, however, the advertiser is not obligated to buy the placement and if declined, the deal will be transferred to the Open RTB or Private Marketplace. 

Programmatic advertising’s benefits for advertisers. 

Programmatic advertising offers plenty of advantages for advertisers, with improved efficiency, additional time for optimization, and a sharper focus being among the most prominent. Here are some of the other key reasons why programmatic advertising could be a great asset to your business: it saves time, optimizes budget spending, enables target marketing, ensures data privacy, provides detailed tracking and analytics, allows real-time adjustment, and more. 

Here are some main challenges hitting advertisers’ daily work, that might be resolved using advanced programmatic software: 

• Reaching the right audience: With the vast number of devices, platforms, and applications, it can be difficult to reach the desired target audience with relevant ads. 
• Inefficient use of resources: Without proper targeting, advertisers may waste resources on impressions that do not reach their desired audience, leading to low conversion rates and a poor return on investment. 
• Ad fatigue: With the increasing number of mobile ads, users may become fatigued and less likely to engage with them, leading to decreased effectiveness of advertising efforts.  
• Lack of transparency: Traditional mobile advertising methods can lack transparency, making it difficult for advertisers to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and make informed decisions.  
• Complexity: The process of purchasing and managing mobile ad impressions can be complex, requiring specialized skills and knowledge. 

Why use a DSP for mobile: 

Outstanding reach:  

When it comes to digital advertising, as mentioned before, a DSP allows marketers to bid on ad inventory in real time while targeting specific audiences based on accumulated data such as demographics, browsing behavior, and location. DSPs typically use sophisticated algorithms to optimize campaigns and improve performance, and they provide detailed reporting and analytics to help advertisers make informed decisions about their digital advertising strategy. Furthermore, the reach of a DSP is crucial, as it allows advertisers to connect with potential customers across a vast network of publishers and micro publishers, reaching audiences on various devices and platforms and providing a more efficient way to target and engage with potential customers. The reach of an advertisement is calculated by dividing the total impressions by the frequency of the ad. KPIs such as awareness, interest, consideration, and preference can be achieved by reaching the desired audience with the optimal frequency. 

Algorithmic bidding on auctions (RTB): 

The process of RTB has many advantages for example it provides advertisers with greater efficiency, it improves targeting owns higher transparency, is cost-effective, and can have a wider audience reach, making it a valuable tool in the digital advertising landscape. 

• Increased efficiency: RTB allows advertisers to purchase ad impressions in real-time, allowing them to target the right audience at the exact right time. This increases efficiency and reduces the need for manual optimization. 
• Improved targeting: RTB allows advertisers to target specific audiences based on factors such as demographics, behavior, interests, and location. This enables them to serve more relevant ads to a wide range of users, which expands the chances of conversion. 
• Greater transparency: RTB provides more transparency as advertisers can see the specific websites and apps where their ads are being displayed. This enables them to optimize their campaigns more effectively.
• Cost-effective: RTB is cost-effective as advertisers can bid on ad impressions in real-time, based on their specific needs and budgets. This reduces the chances of overspending and enables them to get the most out of their ad spend. 
• Access to a wider audience and enhancing brand awareness: RTB enables advertisers to reach a wider audience by purchasing ad impressions across multiple publishers and ad networks. This increases the reach of their campaigns and can help to improve brand awareness. 

Maximize your own first-party data (connect to your MMP): 

Collecting first-party data when it comes to mobile app marketing is crucial when wanting to engage with existing and new users. It’s probably one of the most important tools a company has in order to understand its audience. To retain current customers and gain new ones, this understanding is vital. The accumulated data about customers and potential customers allows better retargeting and reaching the most profitable geos as well as predicting trends that could become valuable to the business. For example, first-party data such as a website’s cart information, page visits, etc., helps implement the right retargeting strategies. Connecting to an MMP of your choice gives you the ability to create look-alikes and expand reach and outreach to new and unexpected audiences based on the data collected.  

Conclusion about mobile DSP: 

Investing a great deal of your marketing efforts in a DSP platform may be one of the smartest decisions you could make for your business. Its ability to provide highly targeted ad campaigns and an exceptional audience reach with more precision and by spending less is a huge advantage to any advertiser. 

If you’re looking to simplify your ad-buying process and reach more users, check out our mobile DSP technology and start watching your numbers grow.  

Mobile advertisers will likely never forget the summer of 2021. Until then, Apple enabled them to track specific user activity on iOS 14+ with IDFA (Identifier for Advertiser), which made retargeting both easier and more efficient.

However, understanding customer demand for greater privacy, Apple revoked the option, leaving many advertisers feeling lost. Starting this summer, Apple ATT (App Tracking Transparency) asks users whether they’re interested in sharing their information with app owners and advertisers. Beforehand, users had to make an effort to protect their privacy, and many weren’t aware of their options. Now, when the option is presented to them with a simple pop-up message, many customers choose “no” on the Apple ATT.

Advertisers, therefore, find themselves wasting precious dollars, as their ads for one gender reach another, and the overall interest and intent targeting becomes significantly less accurate.

But thankfully, advertising on Apple’s iOS 14+ devices isn’t the only option. In this new ecosystem, smart advertisers are diversifying their investment utilizing DSPs as well.

How DSPs Help Advertisers Generate Results in a Post IDFA Ecosystem

DSP stands for Demand Side Platform. It’s an automated, programmatic, algorithm-driven media buying platform. As we previously shared, DSPs calculate the best bid to get you the impressions they need at the moment they become available.

They’re not connected to your usual big players, like Facebook and TikTok (more on why that’s a benefit in a bit), but to a variety of other media sources and exchanges. They’re not meant to replace the big players, either, so this isn’t a suggestion to stop advertising on Apple’s iOS 14+ devices in a post IDFA ecosystem.

Instead, we recommend tapping into DSPs to expand your media buying toolkit. Often, DSPs enable advertisers to utilize even small budgets more efficiently across channels and geographies.

DSP mobile advertising

1) Diversify Your Ad Investment

Before privacy concerns were addressed and Apple ATT was launched, advertisers were encouraged to invest larger budgets in iOS14+ devices. However, as massive of an audience as Apple has, people using iOS14+ devices only comprise a portion of the market. Like we’ve discussed Facebook and Google, there are more baskets for your advertising dollar eggs.

Diversifying your ad spend across the channels DSPs have to offer will actually help you reach a larger audience. You still get access to very high-quality inventory. You show your audience you care about their privacy by advertising on channels that protect it. And, just as importantly, you protect your own user acquisition safety.

When you do that, you stop relying exclusively (or mostly) on one media channel. As we’ve seen this time and many times in the past, a channel can change the rules on you whenever it decides, or whenever regulation decides for it.

A post IDFA world is a challenging one for sure, but it also holds hidden opportunities for advertisers who are open to discovering them.

2) Overcome Platform Advertising Fatigue

As efficient as IDFA was for advertisers, constantly advertising to iOS 14+ customers presented another challenge on top of privacy concerns. It’s called advertising fatigue. We often see it with clients who dedicate their entire budget to the same big platform or two, such as Facebook and Instagram.

On the one hand, members on these platforms see the same advertisers over and over again. Unless you surprise them with truly outstanding creative, it gradually becomes more and more challenging to gain their attention and clicks.

On the other hand, after a while of focusing so much of their budget and effort mostly on one platform, advertisers maximize their reach. Their ads show up over and over again in front of these fatigued audiences, without drawing in new ones, who might be a great fit, but hang out elsewhere online.

It’s kinda like going to the same beloved grocery store in a small town. You know the people, you love their products, but when you finally make it to the supermarket in the big city, you find yourself with an almost endless stream of exciting products that could be a great fit, but you never would have discovered them if you hadn’t ventured outside your comfort zone of daily habits.

3) Actively Discover the Most Profitable User Acquisition Channels for Your Specific App

Just because Apple ATT leads to less data doesn’t mean a post IDFA ecosystem is completely data-less. In fact, that’s one of the reasons it’s recommended to test out DSPs. DSPs tend to offer transparency – you see exactly which media source led to higher acquisition in a more cost-effective way. The more you use them, the more data you gain, the more comfortable you get making experiments, and the better results your bidding provides.

With DSPs, it’s very easy to conduct user acquisition experiments across media sources. The idea is to do incremental testing. Turn off media sources, and turn on just the one you want to test. Once a media source performs well, turn on an additional one.

It’s all done from one platform, so you don’t need to learn every channel’s own dashboard from scratch each time. This makes it easier to focus on performance, and you gradually optimize the unique channel combination that works for your specific app.

A Post IDFA Ecosystem is an Opportunity for Growth

As Apple ATT changes privacy reaches and advertisers adjust to a post IDFA ecosystem, it makes perfect sense to feel overwhelmed and take some time to process the changes. Yet it’s equally important to remember this isn’t the end of the game, nor is it the change that will stand in your way of user acquisition and app growth.

First, this change only impacts iOS 14+ user targeting – a large audience, no doubt, yet not the only audience around. The rest of the world continues as usual, at least for now.

As hard as it is, it’s an opportunity to venture out of your comfort zone and test out other platforms and media sources. DSPs give you access to data, larger and newer audiences, plus the ability to cook up your own unique mix of optimized user acquisition channels.

As you’ve witnessed, the only constant in our industry is change. But if you start now, next time there’ll be a big change like this, you’ll be prepared. Maybe you’ll even be ahead of the game.

The online advertising space is a near-constant state of flux. Trends and technologies that govern the way advertisements are delivered, tracked and measured come and go according to fast-changing government regulations and the whims of the big, corporate ecosystem players like Amazon, Apple and Google. 

One such technological trend is the Demand Side Platform (DSP). These fully automated platforms connect between advertisers and publishers, leveraging algorithm-driven programmatic advertising to streamline the process of buying and selling ads via real-time bidding (RTB). 

DSPs take the pain out of digital advertising by automating the ad-buying decision-making process. DSPs leverage complex algorithms to calculate the bid amount for an impression at the precise time it becomes available on a publisher’s site. With DSPs, even small operations can launch high-impact digital ad campaigns across different geos and platforms (mobile, display, search and video) at scale.   

Programmatic Fraud and DSPs

While there’s no arguing with the fact that DSPs simplify the work of digital advertisers, recent years have seen their popularity fall because of concerns regarding fraud and brand safety. Allegations of non-human traffic (bots) to boost impressions, impression laundering and domain masking coupled with a total lack of transparency into advertising metrics caused many advertisers to lose trust in the smaller DSPs. Brand safety is also a cause for concern with more and more reported instances of ads being displayed on extremist websites, and other websites that brands don’t want to associate with.

• According to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), advertisers saw $7.2 billion lost to bots in 2016. 
• Imperva, a leading security firm, claimed that 29% of all web traffic in 2016 originated from harmful bots.
• Research from Digital Place-Based Association shows that brand safety is a major issue for 76% of agency planners. 

Finally, Safe, Transparent and Cost-effective DSP from Zoomd

With so much fraud and brand safety concerns revolving around DSPs, it was obvious that our clients deserved more. That’s why we made the development of a truly transparent, cost-effective DSP a priority. Zoomd is proud to launch our very own, in-house DSP that delivers full transparency and ensures brand safety for our clients. 

Leveraging a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and the advertising market, Zoomd DSP delivers transparency on both the media source and the media cost. Our self-service platforms gives advertisers the ability to easily manage their own UA campaigns, at scale while delivering industry-leading ROAS and full transparency into tracking metrics. With Zoomd DSP, advertisers can rest assured that their ads are viewed by their targeted audiences and that they’re displayed on reputable, brand-safe publisher websites.

Next Generation Mobile DSP – DSP for Mobile Acquisition

Zoomd DSP eliminates fraud and optimizes performance with value-driven, CPI/CPA-optimized campaigns that ensure maximum ROAS, with no hidden fees or surprise endings. Leverage data-driven media buying to launch KPI-focused campaigns targeting custom audiences based on your existing user data. 

• Full transparency– Zoomd DSP eliminates fraud and prioritizes brand safety with full transparency into media sources and media costs. Advertisers benefit from detailed tracking reports via a centralized interface that connects them with multiple, highly vetted, safelisted ad exchanges. 
• Complete control– Our self-service platform offers advertisers total control over their UA campaigns by enabling them to easily and simply manage their advertising efforts by themselves.
• High performance– Quickly and easily set up A/B tests that identify your top-performing creatives, without adding significant costs to your budget so that you launch user acquisition campaigns targeting top-performing lookalike audiences in any geo you choose. 
• Anywhere, anytime– Zoomd DSP connects to leading ad exchanges capable of reaching every impression in the world. Define your geo-targeting parameters and watch the downloads come in from every corner of the globe.

Parting Shots
Zoomd DSP offers advertisers a safe, transparent programmatic platform that delivers maximum performance without having to worry about fraud or brand safety. Advertisers unlock greater value and benefit from more control with a fully automated, self-service platform that delivers a robust arsenal of advanced advertising tools. Leverage A/B testing, custom audiences, global reach and safelisted ad exchanges to finally achieve your full reach and potential.

Zoomd’s new Programmatic Demand Side Platform (DSP) service increases audience and media reach potential to nearly 100% of global smartphone users, complementing the premium channels available on Zoomd’s SaaS platform

Vancouver, British Columbia, March 17, 2021 – Zoomd Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: ZOMD, OTC: ZMDTF) and its wholly-owned subsidiary Zoomd Ltd. (collectively, “Zoomd” or the “Company“), the marketing tech (MarTech) user-acquisition and engagement platform, announces it has launched a new DSP (Demand Side Platform) service that significantly increases its publishing media reach to nearly full global coverage.

Management believes that the immediate result of this new service launch, alongside its organic growth and planned M&A activities, may result in an increase of year-over-year revenues for the year ending December 31, 2021. The revenue increase is expected to be driven by organic growth, the new DSP services and acquisitions of businesses. Additional details about the Company’s projections will be contained in the Company’s Management Discussion & Analysis which will be available later this month.

The new DSP service has been introduced via a white-label agreement with a DSP platform provider and is now available as an integral part of the Zoomd SaaS platform.

“Zoomd becomes a significant global player in the AdTech / MarTech space,” says Amit Bohensky, Chairman and Co-Founder of Zoomd, adding “our new DSP service puts us in the same product offering category of the largest AdTech companies in the world and we believe that this service, coupled with our growth and M&A strategy, will propel the company into an accelerated business success.”

About Zoomd

Zoomd (TSXV: ZOMD, OTC: ZMDTF), founded in 2012 and began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange in September 2019, offers a site search engine to publishers, and a mobile app user-acquisition platform, integrated with a majority of global digital media, to advertisers. The platform unifies more than 600 media sources into one unified dashboard. Offering advertisers, a user acquisition control center for managing all new customer acquisition campaigns using a single platform. By unifying all these media sources onto a single platform, Zoomd saves advertisers significant resources that would otherwise be spent consolidating data sources, thereby maximizing data collection and data insights while minimizing the resources spent on the exercise. Further, Zoomd is a performance-based platform that allows advertisers to advertise to the relevant target audiences using a key performance indicator-algorithm that is focused on achieving the advertisers’ goals and targets.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Disclaimer IN REGARD TO Forward-looking statements

This news release includes certain “forward-looking statements” under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect Zoomd’s benefiting from the new DSP product, its growth strategy being successful, its revenue increasing, its ability to consummate acquisitions and its ability to further grow and expand its client base as a result. Forward-looking statements are based on our current assumptions, estimates, expectations and projections that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, technological, legal, privacy matters, political and social uncertainties (including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic), the extent and duration of which are uncertain at this time on Zoomd’s business and general economic and business conditions and markets. There can be no assurance that any of the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

The reader should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. All forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement.

For further information please contact:

Amit Bohensky
Chairman
Zoomd
ir@zoomd.com

Investor Relations
Lytham Partners, LLC
Ben Shamsian
New York | Phoenix
ZOMD@lythampartners.com