Forget all the digital marketing tech you know… Just as you forgot the phones of yesteryear

For those of us who used a Nokia 3310 and a generation of Nokia phones thereafter, before we switched to iPhone and other brands, we know just how great those phones were. They got us through calls, SMS and even carried a couple of games. There seemed to be just one brand of phones, the indomitable Nokia.

Then came along Apple. Apple entered the arena with a game changer phone, with smart software, making ordinary phones smartphones. This redefined how people used their mobiles. It gave people a good browser to navigate the world wide web, a powerful hardware to support mobile gaming and an app store that contained tons of great and ever-increasing apps. Still, Nokia maintained a huge advantage over Apple for years - its distribution network and its relatively well priced products across the spectrum.

Late but great, Google arrived, and grabbed market share. Not as a gadget provider. Google brought software, an app store and then gave wings to manufacturers to craft a phone that could take on a Nokia or an iPhone at a price and product advantage that the manufacturers deemed fit. This essentially made the iPhone alternative, Android, affordable to a mass of people who wished for a smartphone but could not escape Nokia.

Circa 2020, as I write amid a turbulent COVID-19 phase, I cannot help but compare notes with this piece of history in a different industry - advertising technology.

Like Nokia, the staple display marketing software in the world was and has been Google AdWords (now rebranded as Google Ads) for two decades. Around a decade ago, a revolution happened when publishers and advertisers started demanding more transparency in the money being traded among themselves. This led to a framework being jointly built, called Programmatic Advertising. Naturally, companies jumped into implementing this framework.

Publishers implemented the framework on their websites and apps. Advertisers started buying media programmatically. Google too jumped in, by buying out a programmatic platform called Invite Media and merging it into their DoubleClick offering for Advertisers and Publishers. Programmatic media buying also ushered in a special feature (akin to the app store), the ability to make a deal with any data provider of your choice and importing those data segments into the programmatic platform for precision-based targeting.

This was revolutionary. But there was a catch.

It was and still is available only to brands and agencies that can afford to cough up a platform fee, commit to monthly big dollar spends with guaranteed annual spend commitments. Kind of the pricier iPhone of the digital advertising industry. So, anyone who could transact big dollars and pay a platform fee, gained access to this powerful platform. A software for the big businesses. The common man i.e. a vast majority of small, medium and large enterprises continue to use the trusted and efficient Google Ads platform. This population does not probably know what they are missing. Even Nokia of old had many games and a browser that rendered websites decently well. Of course, an iPhone was desirable, but that did not matter, Nokia worked just as well.

However, in the advertising business, it matters if you own a Nokia or an iPhone, i.e. are you on Google Ads or a Programmatic Platform. The big companies use data as the new age oil and get bigger. Simply because they can afford to. As a small, medium or large enterprise with limited resources or not wanting to get into annual commitments, your tools are the same. But the giants can always use the advantage of data to outbid you to reach the target audience at a lower cost of acquisition, even though they are spending a lot more for that audience and inventory.

So how do we build an Android like model in the digital advertising ecosystem? Simply put, how do we get programmatic (the software) and the audience (app store) to the manufacturers (ad agencies) at a price that is affordable and accessible to all?

Firstly, we take out the platform fee. This automatically makes the platform affordable. Add the fee when customers want to commit to higher spends and need guaranteed inventory.

Next, unhinge from the minimum spends requirement. Let everyone in.

Finally, add the app store to the mix. In this case, data providers. Make it easy for brands and agencies to find various data providers on a single marketplace, without the need to sign-up separately as being done today.

This approach essentially brings advanced targeting and a single place to buy inventory at affordable prices. At BPRISE, we have created this one-stop integrated platform to offer audience-based programmatic media buying, delivering ads across video and banner formats. You get to pick from over 75+ data providers, 30,000+ data segments (example aspiring home buyers, is a data cut for whom you can target home loan ads or new home ads) and a publisher inventory that spans the globe (by publisher, we mean websites and apps).

In current times when almost everyone is online due to the coronavirus crisis, and in the near future when online will become the preferred platform to connect, you will appreciate the advantage of filtering - right down to the website or app, Geo-location and audience to target your ad.

Now that you know why you should forget practices of the past, request access to our closed beta trial of the latest in marketing technology.

4 Effective Ways Of Using Location Data To Show Digital Ads To Store Visitors

Marketers are slowly realizing that the key to carrying out fruitful conversations with their favorite audience is by having a contextually relevant conversation with them. To achieve such relevance marketers invest in learning more about customers such as their demographics, location data, shopping behavior. In this article, let’s uncover how location data adds relevance.

Store visitors are very active on their mobile devices even when they’re inside the store. Such shoppers, in addition to looking for products at the store, are either browsing websites, chatting, playing music (hello earphones!) or playing games. Shop owners and brands will testify to this and also admit that it is a challenge to communicate with such potential shoppers let alone have relevant marketing done.

Brands who wish to make the most of every available opportunity are constantly looking for ways to connect with and engage customers and store visitors. For example, when customers visit your store and spend time on their phones, that’s your shot at meeting them half-way! How about taking all your in-store offers and discounts right in front of your store visitors, digitally?

Woman on her phone while shopping

 

Reach Them Half Way Digitally Based On Their Physical Location

Customers’ physical location indicate their real-world preferences. And knowing your customers’ preference in the physical (analog) world in addition to understanding their behavior online reveals a trove of information to you as a marketer or shop owner.

Location data tells a customer’s daily travel routines (like commutes), recurring shopping habits (such as grocery shopping or petrol pump visits), restaurant preferences, even purchasing behavior online and at stores. In the case of the store owner or marketer, they can use this to personalize their ads with products and services that shoppers might care about and also allocate their budget accordingly.

Location-based advertising (LBA) is used to attract new customers and re-connect with existing ones in the form of ads, text messages and push notifications to the shoppers’ mobile devices. According to eMarketer, marketers will spend $26.5 billion in mobile location-targeted advertising this year. To stay ahead of the curve, brands must be aware of the various methods of implementing LBA.

Proximity Marketing

The closer a customer is to your store, the higher is the potential to engage. Proximity marketing uses beacons to trigger alerts or ads and other such content to the smartphones of store visitors. The communication can be delivered within a few feet of a specific location.

An example would be to push notifications about a sale or seasonal offers to shoppers who have your brand’s mobile app installed. With BPRISE, you can also mark a location you wish to target and show display ads (both banner and video ads) on websites and apps that your shoppers are likely to visit. Greet potential customers nearby with catchy ads on their mobile screens and engage them.

Who can benefit: Retailers, Hypermarkets

Geoconquesting

In-market buyers or people who’re actively looking for products you sell or similar to yours at the store next door means “potential”. Geoconquesting uses push notifications and ads on mobile apps to attract app users when they are at specific “competitor” locations.

For example, Burger King runs a campaign offering “one cent whopper” to McDonald’s visitors who have the Burger King app open. With BPRISE, you can target similar store visitors with in-app ads as well as programmatic ads (aka display ads!). It can be used to attract potential customers nearby who’re most likely to buy a burger! (sic)

Who can benefit: QSRs, Restaurants

Geofencing

If they’ve installed your brand’s app, they’re already interested. Geofencing uses mobile apps to share location-based content and ads to its users in real-time when they’re at a predefined location.

For instance, when users who have permitted an app to use their location enter a geofenced area, they may receive a contextually relevant ad or push notification when using the app. With BPRISE, you can target malls, shops, entry and exit areas, specific store sections to grab the shoppers’ attention in app as well as on websites, Facebook and Instagram with contextually relevant banner and video ads.

Who can benefit: Shop-in-shop brands

Geotargeting

If they’ve once visited your store or website, they’re likely to do so again. Geotargeting serves ads and notifications (on your own app) to an audience who previously bought from a brand. This is also a time sensitive form of LBA.

For example, a retailer will want to target visitors in the past 90 days about an upcoming mega sale. A builder or an auto dealer will want to target people who visited their site or showroom a week or two weeks or three weeks ago respectively. Because it clearly indicates that such visitors are in the final stages of the buying cycle. A travel agent will want to look back at the last season’s customers and so on.

With BPRISE you can have display ads in the form of banners and videos placed on the websites and apps that your customers are likely to frequent. Serve ads down to specific geographies, pin codes and even down to the store-level. Diwali is just around the corner, what can you think of offering your customers??

Who can benefit: Brands, Real-estate, Auto-dealers, Tourism/Travel Agents, Airlines

Privacy & The Use Of Location Data In Advertising

At BPRISE, we ensure that the location data used whether collected via GPS or another signal is opted-in, which means that the user is opting in to share their location for advertising purposes. The data is aggregated and anonymized so that it cannot be used for individual tracking. We adhere to codes of conduct which maintain and protect consumer privacy.

Our duty as the marketing platform provider is to help marketers and brand owners embrace privacy standards which create a trusting environment for customers. When customers share their rich location data willingly you can drive contextually relevant and meaningful campaigns digitally to meet them half way at their real-world touchpoints.

 

 

Introduce Your Business To New Prospects With Video Ads

Get over a 100 MN impressions for your video ads & expand the reach of your business. Use BPRISE’s ad platform to run videos that help you present your services or products to potential customers in a unique fashion.

Video consumption is on the rise because of the ease with which the viewer understands its message. Feel the need to advertise on India’s top new websites? Or are you keen on running ads of your business on regional websites? BPRISE can help!

 

Benefits of advertising your business using short snippets of videos

 

  • Introduce your business offerings. Share videos of your product or services to help people connect with your business in a unique way. Use any of the free tools for making simple videos online or get it done professionally or even film yourself explaining why your product matters. Give netizens a reason to care for your business and educate them with video ads.
  • Widen the reach of your business on the web. Reach your customers on Times of India, MoneyControl, Sportskeeda, Asianet and 100s of such websites. From our list of ad publishers you can choose to run your video ads on websites that your potential customers might frequent. You have full control, from selecting the websites to setting the budget.
  • Measure how well your video campaign performed. Check your BPRISE account to keep a tab on views and budget. Visit the “Insights” tab in your BPRISE account to learn more about how ad viewers engaged with your ad. For example, you can tell which videos have been watched fully.

 

 

Get started in 4 simple steps

BPRISE ad platform is a programmatic advertising platform which means you can buy ad slots from across some of the best websites in India. A few features of the platform making it worth your while:

  1. Geographic Targeting
  2. 2000+ Publishers (websites and apps)
  3. Auto-optimization for the desired CTR

Tune up your digital advertising

As a business owner you would want to advertise and market your offerings digitally. With BPRISE’s easy to use, multi-functional platform, you could potentially supercharge your digital reach and brand awareness. For more details about advertising digitally, write to us at [email protected] and we’d be more than happy to help.

Let us know what your current digital initiatives are in the comments below!

Google Ads vs Display Ads Using BPRISE’s Programmatic Platform

We worked with an ad agency to launch display ads for an airline brand using the BPRISE Manager Platform. Here’s what we observed after the campaign took off:

Ad Agency Is No Stranger To Multiple Campaign Strategies

It’s a given that when you farm for results on new soil, you must work a little harder and in this day and age, research a little extra. Such was the strategic thinking of the agency to help their client, an airline brand. The objective was to help the airline penetrate “new soil” aka the Indian market.

They opted for Google Ads as well as display ads using the BPRISE Manager Platform. The goal of this approach was simple enough, to test what works and at what price.

What’s In A Name?

Google Ads: The agency observed that the airline’s ads were served on some of the most frequently used gaming apps. Though, the click-through rate was impressive, the traffic quality to the landing page was admittedly questionable.

Display Ads through BPRISE’s platform: Maximum number of clicks on the airline’s ads were from visitors of premium news and business sites. Quality traffic is indicative of valuable potential for your clients.

Individual browsing news online

Ad Agency’s Conclusion

All strategies said and done, it finally boils down to the client’s satisfaction. And “quality results” usually means conversion/sales for your clients.

In this scenario, the performance of ads run via both platforms – BPRISE and Google – averages out and the only deciding factor of which platform outperformed the other falls on the quality of the targeted audience.

Since the agency ran ads on hand-picked, premium, high traffic websites through BPRISE, their client, the airline was advertised to quality leads. For more details about the platform, please write to us at [email protected]

New advertising tools will surface as technology progresses. Your ultimate goal must be to test the waters when it comes to results for your clients. Explore such tools just as you test multiple campaign strategies.

We understand that “results” for your clients will sometimes mean clicks on ads, increasing their web traffic or leads to websites. Hopefully this article given you an idea that newer marketing tools may work for you and more so for your clients.

Try the BPRISE Manager Platform which is completely free of cost. With no platform fees whatsoever, test the waters with us especially if your client’s goal is listed above.

With our platform demonstration you can learn how easy it is to make display campaigns work for your clients. We have observed that display ads work for businesses in the B2C space.

 

Grow Your Business With Banner Ads (AKA Display Ads)

Farming for quality results work the same whether on a field or the web when it comes to digital marketing. The stakes are high, the fertilizers are aplenty, the equipment too many. But with everything said and done, you must get your hands soiled if you want your efforts to bear fruit.

We’ve come a long way since the web’s first banner ad published in 1994. Banner ads often called display ads are used to highlight a company or a brand’s product/service/offer. Attractive and informative creatives attract clicks from web users. This takes effort and a lot of thought! Creatives and content are your only players when trying to win clicks.

Increasing clicks on your display ads obviously means that your ads have a healthy click-through rate (CTR). That’s a good thing to have, if you want to direct web users/potential customers to your website or your specially designed “landing pages”.

For e.g. choose display advertising if you’re opening a brand-new ecommerce store that sells organic fertilizers online. This way you can draw interested people to your online store. What’s more is that you could also launch display ads if you’re a store owner and you want to advertise your products/offers to people in the vicinity of your store.

Here’s 5 solid reasons you must consider advertising your business using display ads:

 

1. Increase web traffic and leads to websites

Banner ads make it possible for brands to convey their messages to future customers. Clicks on ads mean you get drive traffic to your website thereby increasing sales potential from web users who’re interested in your products/offers.

 

2. Introduce new products or seasonal discounts

Brands use text, images and more to advertise their latest products, offers and discounts to attract store visitors, web traffic and even potential leads. Catchy creatives make web users want to learn more about your offer.

 

3. Create brand awareness

Display ads bring the brand’s logo, message and offer before potential customers. By repeatedly showing your brand’s ads to web users, you’ll create a sense of familiarity and get them interested. Drive leads to website and conversions as a result.

 

4. Get new customers

Banner ads help businesses bring their brand before newer audiences. Put the right message before quality traffic. Unlike search ads, users don’t have to look for you, your brand or your product to hear about and get interested in your brand.

 

5. Start easily and in the most cost-effective way

Businesses of all sizes benefit from display ads because they get to advertise to a wide audience using display ads. Tools like the BPRISE Manager Platform simplify buying ad space online and running your brand’s display ads. Also, the BPRISE platform has no platform fee!

 

Grow Your Business With BPRISE Manager Platform

BPRISE Manager Platform – multi-functional marketing tool

Marketing tools and strategies are like the farming equipment and fodder you use so that in time your work bears fruit. Digital marketers use the BPRISE Manager Platform to serve ads to people. The result of their strategies create visibility for their brands, reach for some and leads for others. A hospitality client of ours witnessed a CTR as high as 0.40%, read about it here!

With a massive increase in the number of internet users, businesses use digital ads to reach out to potential customers online. Digital ad spends of brands last year amounted to big numbers last year signifying the impact of digital ads on the performance of a business.

With BPRISE, you can not only launch advertising campaigns but also measure it’s impact both online (websites, apps) and even at stores. All we’re saying is that you should have the power to buy ad space from premium websites at rates convenient to you.

How have you been able to generate traffic for your website/store? Share your digital advertising experiences in the comments below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How BPRISE Helped A Mumbai-based Cafe Get Walk-ins During Slack Hours

Did you know that it is generally harder to sell to existing customers as opposed to new ones? You’ll probably agree if you’re a retailer. We’ll talk about how retailers can really win customers with digital advertising in our next articles. For now let’s take a walk-through of a successful brand awareness campaign that we carried out for a café during its open hours.

Who was the client?

Our client is a café based in Mumbai.

What was the problem?

The café witnessed a dry patch post lunch hours, every day.

How did we solve it?

Display Advertising using the BPRISE Manager Platform (DSP): Targeted display ads across a number of websites with the location set to Mumbai on the BPRISE Manager Platform, helped us introduce the café to a number of potential customers across 500+ websites.

We optimized display advertising by filtering out websites on the platform, that didn’t do well. It’s possible to adjust the websites where the ads will show on the BPRISE Manager Platform.

Sponsored Facebook ads using the BPRISE Manager Platform: Targeted ads on Facebook to reach people within a 3 KM radius around the café via the BPRISE Manager Platform.

Ad creatives by our partner agency Influestr announced the cafe’s discount.

What was the result?

The café got up to 5 walk-ins every day post lunch hours since the launch of the campaign. For the brand awareness campaign, the BPRISE Manager Platform captured a CTR of 0.4% initially. The average CTR of the campaign was approx. 0.2%.

The nature of the campaign is such that ad viewers would click on the ads (announcing discounts) initially and then choose to act on it i.e. drop in at the café.

What is the BPRISE Manager Platform?

The BPRISE Manager Platform helps brands and agencies launch display ads, social media ads, email and SMS campaigns and push notifications on mobile apps from a single dashboard.

Marketers that use DSPs, email and SMS vendors and more can now switch to just one platform that does it all – programmatic media buying, email and SMS marketing, launching push notifications on mobile apps and more.

The BPRISE Manager Platform is a marketing automation tool with the capabilities of a Demand Side Platform (DSP) that helps marketers (or platform users) to buy media programmatically.

The platform also assists marketers to launch ads on Facebook and Instagram. Marketers can use the platform to create brand awareness, reach masses and win leads.

How can BPRISE help your business?

Whether you’re a restaurant or a retail store, we can help you launch brand awareness campaigns. Got an exciting offer that you wanna share with people within a 5 KM radius of your outlet? We can help! Opening a brand new store? Wanna advertise to the local residents using display ads? Our platform can equip you with all that and more! Write to us with inquiries related to media buying, campaign optimization, SMS-email campaigns and any other query you may have in digital advertising!

Purchase Digital Ads Using Software

Fundamentally what programmatic advertising means is, using software to purchase digital ad spots. Programmatic can be defined as the use of software-driven technology to automate the whole ad buying process or even automate parts of it. It is also sometimes called advertising done programmatically or programmatic buying or just programmatic.

#1 Promise Of Programmatic Advertising

Efficiency & simplicity: Because “programmatic” automates the ad buying and selling process with the help of software and technology they achieve better scale and speed than humans possibly can.

#2 Promise Of Programmatic Advertising

Precision & relevancy: Because “programmatic” makes it possible for advertisers to incorporate large amounts of data, they’re able to serve users with ads that are more likely relevant based on users’ behavioral, demographic, psychographic data and purchase intents.

Traditionally online ads, like print and TV, were directly bought by sales persons, who negotiated on terms such as target audience, placements, the number of impressions and price after which both parties signed an insertion order. Direct sales or deals like these are still prevalent but now technology can be used to simplify or automate the process.

Wait, Where Does The Data Come From?

Programmatic comes with the ability to couple data with automation and this makes it possible to target audiences based on their behaviours, demographics, interests and other individual characteristics. Not only do you get to focus on where to place your ad with programmatic, but also on who sees your ad.

Programmatic technology equips advertisers to target segments of audience who are most likely to be interested in what they’re selling. When your system spots a cookie or mobile identifier that matches the targeting criteria you’ve set as an advertiser, you can bid for ad impressions automatically in real time.

The Role Of Data In Digital Advertising

You already know that publishers and social networks learn about keywords searched, types of content consumed and profile information of users with the help of cookies and identifiers. It is commonly practiced across the digital (ad) spectrum.

Wonder where advertisers get data from? If you’re an advertiser, you probably have your own first-party data that may include sales transaction data, CRM data, customer names, emails, types of products purchased, recent purchasers, and average order value.

Data aggregators are companies that become a third-party data source. Such companies often have demographic data points of users that are of value to advertisers. They have information like credit score, household income and purchase behaviour of users.

Plug in a programmatic platform and advertisers can target audiences using a number of data sources at the time an impression becomes available. Let’s say the cookie or other identifier matches your targeting criteria, then the ad buying system (a trading desk or demand side platform) will automatically bid on the impression.

Breaking down Programmatic Buying

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

RTB is the use of technology in bidding for ad impressions in real time. Such auction-based buying happens on open ad exchanges or in private marketplaces. Any buying platform can bid in open ad exchanges for inventory that have been put up for auction, by numerous sites (publishers). 

Private marketplaces (PMP) are invitation-only RTB arenas in which one or a handful of publishers (“premium publishers”) make their inventory or audiences available to a certain number of buyers.

Programmatic Direct

When ad inventory is sold to buyers directly by the publisher’s sales-force without an auction it is called programmatic direct. Although human intervention may not be required in programmatic direct deals, it is more manual than RTB. Programmatic guaranteed deals can be made for reserved inventory at a set price. Unreserved inventory are sold at fixed rates i.e. buyers are given access to blocks of inventory at a set price. However, in both cases the ads are served and managed programmatically i.e. with the help of software.

Digital advertising will always be prone to change. But if you are willing to evolve with adtech, you’ll discover how efficiently technology can bring you results.

Buy Ad Impressions In Real Time From Publisher Sites

If you read our blogs often, you’re already somewhat familiar with the words DSP (demand-side platform) and programmatic advertising. Just to refresh your memory a DSP is the software platform that advertisers (or marketers of various organizations) use to buy ad inventory and impressions from a range of publisher sites based on the kind of audience that the publisher has. And programmatic ad buying or advertising means using a piece of software to purchase digital advertising. This sort of makes your DSP a programmatic software. Using a machine to buy ads is programmatic as opposed to traditional processes that would involve RFPs, human negotiations and manual insertion orders.

Real-time bidding is when you purchase ads through real-time auctions, but the programmatic software also allows you (as an advertiser) to buy a guaranteed number of ad impressions from specific publisher sites in advance. Buying in such a way is called “programmatic direct.” In short RTB is a type of programmatic buying.

Most B2C brands want to win the attention of customers and potential customers and there’s a price to be paid every time an ad is shown to a specific user. Advertisers bid using an automated platform (think DSP!) for an ad space on a specific website or an app. The auction takes place in milliseconds. The higher you bid, the better are your chances of winning the auction and having your ad displayed to your target audience.

How does RTB work?

  1. User visits a (publisher) website that has ad spaces.
  2. Publisher sends a message to the supply side platform (an SSP is a publisher facing platform) informing that they have an impression/ad space available.
  3. SSP then examines customer information (location, internet search history, age, gender etc) available and sends it to the ad exchange.
  4. Ad exchange conveys this information to the DSP and the auction/bid begins.
  5. DSP bids on the available ad space based on the parameters set by the advertiser.
  6. Highest bidder wins and has ad displayed to the user.

What are its advantages?

  • Advertisers can bid for what they need:

Place bids only on inventories that best suit your campaign. This helps minimize the wastage of media spend on impressions that are not from your desired audience. Moreover the bidding process ensures that each impression can be bought based on the parameters set by the advertiser within the DSP.

  • Publishers get the maximum prices for every impression:

While DSPs bid for on behalf of the advertiser for an impression most useful to him/her, publishers also have the impressions sold at maximum prices based on the real time market demand. Ad Exchanges that facilitate the real time transaction enables publishers to reach out to lot more advertisers. This in turn ensures that publishers sell to the highest bidder.

Who does RTB benefit?

Advertisers – Target and bid more effectively based on the behavioural ground of the customer, which means no more wasted impressions.
Publishers – Gain maximum revenue because advertisers bid for max impression value.
Agencies – Spend efficiently, better control campaigns and achieve targeted results for clients.

Watch out for our next blog where we talk about the mechanism that automates media buying and ad placement in digital space – Programmatic Buying. 

Our Product: The Smart-Marketing Platform

The Arrival

Our platform named “BPRISE Manager Platform” will be used by marketers and media buyers. 

The Solution For Media Buyers

BPRISE Manager Platform is an integral part of the BPRISE marketing solution. The platform makes it possible for you (as a marketer) to serve ads on mobile, web, social media, email and SMS using one simple platform. Rather than being campaign centric like regular DSPs, BPRISE Manager Platform campaigns are target or audience centric. This marketing automation tool is equipped with different supply sources across mobile and web applications, social media and exchanges. Ad-formats supported include banner, interstitial, native, video to name a few. Not just that, through BPRISE Manager Platform, you can also SMS and email your target groups at optimal hours, for example when they’re at your stores or branches. This intelligent marketing tool lets you connect with direct suppliers if you wish to do so. Complementing this, the ability to block and handle fraud, bots ensures that your advertising spend is put to good use.

The Real-Time Everything

At BPRISE, we’re of the opinion that monitoring and optimizing campaigns need to happen in real-time. We root for real-time campaign optimization for the target audience to enable the media buyers or advertisers make course corrections as and when needed rather than realize at the end of the campaign that expected results were not achieved. BPRISE Manager Platform insights provide visualizations of both campaign analysis as well as data analysis in real-time. An easy to use interface and workflow makes a perfect example of how this self-serve platform will create a paradigm shift in the way advertising works. We are now available for agencies, brands and all types of advertisers across verticals be it the Auto, Hospitality, Retail Banking, FMCGs and others. For more information, do not hesitate to connect with us. 

Basics Of A Demand Side Platform (DSP)

“If you’re not putting out relevant content in relevant places, you don’t exist.”

-Gary Vanerchuk

Ever observe how you end up having ads stalk you? Say for example, you check an item on Flipkart but you don’t make the purchase only to have the  ad follow you almost everywhere you go online. They pop up on Facebook, Instagram, certain other websites that you visit and even emails.

This form of intelligent marketing can only be made possible if the advertiser really knows you – as a  consumer. Which is exactly why despite the rain of digital ads online, there are very few smart ones that grab your attention. That’s the customer’s viewpoint. Let’s take a look at the marketer and advertisers’ points of view.

They sit behind computer screens launching marketing campaigns, chasing marketing KPIs, measuring ad performances, reporting and performing a million other bits. With the dawn of all things “smart” and technology platforms to make lives easier, one could say that advertising on different channels can be accomplished pretty much effortlessly. Speaking of making lives easier in the world of advertising, traditional direct buying processes are taking a seat back given the birth of new buying methods on platforms that better connect media buyers and sellers. For example, programmatic advertising automates the process of buying and selling of online advertisements. One of the primary buying tool/platform facilitating programmatic buying is a DSP.

It stands for a Demand-Side Platform. Simply put, it’s an automated buying platform used by advertisers (aka media buyers) and marketing agencies to purchase digital ad inventory from the media owners (aka publishers). A DSP will have basic targeting functionalities like start date and end date, geo targeting, budget pacing, frequency capping, day parting, device targeting and contextual targeting.

DSP allows advertisers to buy impressions from a range of publisher sites that have the specific kind of audience which is of interest to the advertiser. The medium through which publishers make ad impressions available for buyers (advertisers) is a marketplace called an ad exchange. A DSP is used to manage multiple ad exchange accounts by the buyer. Not just that, they also act as a central hub for handling every data that one can bring in to help with the RTB (real-time bidding) valuation which is very crucial to successful ad exchange management. DSP automates bidding on deals that close at lighting speed, using sensible parameters which are set by the advertiser to control their budget and optimize spend. Decision-making is also automated by demand-side platform with the help of algorithms to ensure if deals are even worth bidding on in the first place. This gives advertisers a transparent view of websites running their ads to ensure they’re brand appropriate.

Is your demand-side platform really working for you?

Advertisers must ask themselves what exactly a DSP helps them accomplish. A strong DSP consists of efficiency and performance, both of which are important in determining the success of your marketing campaigns. It is also important to understand that all DSPs are designed and developed with different capabilities. You as an advertiser must first determine the campaign needs (reach, targeting and cost) and if the solution your’re looking for aligns with what a DSP can deliver.

With the evolution of programmatic buying, the growth of demand-side platform is anticipated to go hand in hand as it introduces advanced targeting tools, providing options to target behaviourally, geographically, and even options to retarget. Advertisers can generate value and increase return on investments (ROI) based on how well they understand the real consumer needs of the target group. Your DSP is a means of presenting your brand and its offerings to potential customers in the form of ads, marketing messages and emails, but having a layer of intelligence to guide you will only fasten your reach to your most convertible customers at actual moments of (purchase) intent.

“Hey! We haven’t seen you for a while on our website, come and check out what we have prepared for you.” Such mailers are not unusual. Whether your’re a retailer or a bank you would at some point consider sending out mailers. If you’re an e-commerce company, how are you reaching your potential customers? Oftentimes, you combine internal data to guide your real-time bidding (RTB) approach. E-commerce giants also often target frequent shoppers with various promotional offers and discounts designed specifically for them. This also helps in maintaining your brand image among the existing customers. Banner ads displayed with the help of RTB have the potential of replacing e-mail, gift cards, discount coupons and even newsletters? What do you think, let us know in the comments below.

Stay tuned for our next blog, where we talk about Real-Time Bidding and how advertisers and publishers make it a win-win.