adv dataProgrammatic advertising is currently celebrated and high on marketers’ agenda, taking into consideration that worldwide around 30% of digital media budgets are programmatically invested.

While these numbers may sound promising, the question is still how you know if your programmatic advertising campaign is successful? The answer is given by attribution models which allow you to see on which channels your campaigns perform best.

Considering what John Wanamaker, the "pioneer in marketing", said already in the early twentieth century: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”, the purpose of programmatic becomes obvious., Wanamaker would have been able to analyze his marketing investments and success with smart attribution models - such as lookalikes. Today, brands can find easily the right audience and appeal to consumers who are interested in the products and services. Nevertheless, innovation can’t rest, since consumers switch nowadays between their Internet-enabled devices several times a day and marketers must follow their path to finally find out which advertising circuit has led to the purchase - and which was punished only with disinterest. Attribution models are therefore essential for a successful programmatic campaign.

Programmatic is breaking new ground

With programmatic advertising, campaign expenditures can be measured accurately - making it far superior to traditional advertising. However, programmatic technology runs the risk of marketers losing themselves in the small-scale and paying only attention to the daily and weekly numbers and the growth of ongoing campaigns. Instead, they should have a clear vision for the long-term goals and plan for the quarterly or annual growth, making sure the right attribution model comes into play.

Attribution certainly has its challenges: How do you know which channel promoted the campaign and reached more people? How do we find out exactly where the customer is right now at his journey to purchase? The fact is that only a small number of marketers are convinced to be using a robust multi-channel attribution model. Experts therefore recommend focusing on identifying the relationships between consumers and their mobile devices by using real-time cross-device identity management: With the right technology, you can associate cookies with the appropriate device IDs. Even before the cookie is deleted again, you have the consumers connected to their other devices and can address them consistently. In a time when consumers leap from device to device, real-time cross-device identity management is probably one of the best solutions.

Clarity through Advanced TV

TV was once an important part of any advertising campaign, but at the same time extremely difficult to measure. With Advanced TV, programmatic advertising and attribution go hand in hand.

Programmatic advertising is developing steadily and is becoming increasingly important for Connected TV and OTT. Thanks to the Internet-enabled devices, marketers can access new measurement data that closes the circle between advertising and sales. Ultimately, it is about tracking the consumer's path to the buying decision, and influencing it, so that the consumer is sure to become a happy customer.

Due to the wealth of data, marketers are not only aware of which mobile phone, laptop and tablet belong to the respective consumer, the Connected TV is now also feeding the customer profile. All this is possible thanks to ‘unique device IDs”. With the help of the IP connection or the mobile network, brands can clearly assign all consumer activities.

So far, TV used to be a problem area for data analysis, but thanks to Advanced TV, targeted TV advertising can be programmatically broadcast and effectively measured. Thus, television becomes another channel that supports the attribution models.

Ultimately, it's all about focusing on the metrics that matter most.

By Daniela La Marca