The true effects of programmatic display marketing : A study on how advertisers could make use of programmatic in the different stages of the customer journey.

Abstract: In digital marketing, display advertising has always been the largest revenue stream for publishers, and the biggest channel for advertisers to increase the traffic to their sites as well as getting better brand recognition. However, with the ever increasing spread of the smartphone and the continuously smarter machine learning of today, the industry has changed.    This study began with a hypothesis that since traditional display marketing evolved into programmatically bought display, the value of display advertising goes beyond branding and driving traffic to sites. Programmatic display advertising is intelligent display advertising that is bought programmatically based on algorithms and big data. The focus of this study was to analyze programmatic display campaigns, which are defined as marketing campaigns where the purchasing of publisher inventory is done by algorithms, with a set of conditions set up by the advertiser. The first step in answering the research question: “What value(s) in marketing does programmatic display campaigns bring in different stages of a company’s lifecycle and what should be expected from such campaigns in these different stages as well as in the different stages of the customer journey?” was to investigate how advertisers and experts value this type of advertisement. To reach the right customer, at the right time, with the right message, has long been the goal advertisers have with digital marketing. However, the way most advertisers go about doing this, is by using different channels to reach the customer at different stages of the customer journey. This study aims to prove that this way of doing digital marketing might not be the best one. In addition to using different channels for different purposes, could programmatic potentially be used in different ways in order to improve marketing? By compiling information and data from previous studies done in the research area, and real programmatic advertising campaigns, this study produced a framework of recommendations for how advertisers should segment their display campaigns in order to get more value from them. This research is done in collaboration with experts and advertisers in the Schibsted Media Group. My hopes are that advertisers in the group will either read this study or listen to my presentation and re-evaluate how the framework in this study could help them rethink the way they structure their display campaigns and also rethink how the channel should be valued. The findings of this study is that yes, it is possible to use programmatic for more than just branding or for the purpose of driving traffic.