Programmatic display: a roughly $60B market in 2019. Why has this form of display advertising become so popular? Why is it better than previous iterations of display media? 

Programmatic display is complicated – that’s because it requires a vast amount of technology to execute. We’ll save the acronym bingo for another time. Strategically, programmatic display is superior because it aggregates all the supply and demand for inventory and audiences and gives the market the opportunity to adjust pricing accordingly through an auction model. 

Programmatic display shifts the way we can reach a target audience from site-based to audience-based. Sounds cool, but what does that really mean. Well, in the early days of display media, if you wanted ads in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, and CNN – you’d be calling each ad sales department, and getting their specific inventory and pricing. Now multiply that by the hundreds or even thousands of sites where your audience might be – and it becomes difficult to scale. Enter programmatic media which uses technology to identify the correct audience, and from there, deliver advertising across any site that audience visits (generally speaking). 

When a web page loads with display inventory, an auction begins for the impression. The advertiser who wins the action gets the opportunity to display their ad(s) to the individual browsing the page. This model opened up market efficiencies and made display media more attainable for many businesses – large and small.

Has your business delved into display media?