By Anton Ruin, CEO of Epom. Epom were a finalist in the ‘Best SaaS Product for Media & Publishing’ category at The 2024 SaaS Awards.

Today’s world is complex, and so should our marketing strategies. Many companies have already discovered the benefits of the omnichannel approach. But there’s a way to make it even more efficient.

Programmatic advertising has the potential to magnify your efforts and bring better results. How can you achieve this synergy? How can we exploit the hidden power of programmatic advertising?

All for One and One for All

Over the last decade, programmatic advertising has been progressively taking over the world. According to Statista, in 2018, global programmatic ad spending was $230.47 billion. Just five years later, in 2023, this number more than doubled ($546 billion). It will most likely reach $779 billion by 2028.

Programmatic advertising has multiple advantages. One of them is its ability to enhance the impact of every marketing channel a company uses. Here are some examples:

• Social media. Imagine a potential customer who reads a post on Facebook created by your brand. A programmatic algorithm collects the data to show this user your ads on other websites and social media. As a result, you build brand awareness faster and more efficiently and boost the chances of conversion.
• Email. A programmatic approach combined with email marketing is an example of true synergy. For instance, it allows customizing emails and tailoring messages to users’ preferences. Also, programmatic systems can collect email engagement data to create more relevant display ads and then use the data from these ads to achieve better targeting.
• Search. Integrating programmatic advertising with search marketing can help you retarget customers while saving time and money. For example, after searching for specific keywords, users will see ads related to their interests. This step can increase leads and lower the acquisition cost.
• Display ads. A programmatic approach and display ads are like lifelong partners: perfect for each other. Programmatic platforms provide much-needed data for optimizing ads in real time and better targeting. They generally make ads more relevant to the audience that sees them.
• DOOH (digital out-of-home). This channel is getting trendy, and with the help of programmatic advertising, it can deliver impressive results. For example, last year, the low-cost airline AirAsia launched a digital campaign to make their hot offers more visible to the public in Malaysia. It lasted seven weeks, and new ads and other content were introduced weekly to the audience. At the end of the campaign, it turned out that programmatic DOOH generated over 29 million impressions (compared to 22 million expected).

As you can see, a programmatic approach can deliver excellent results in any channel, but a cohesive strategy has the most powerful effect. For instance, in the abovementioned AirAsia campaign, programmatic DOOH screens were only one among several channels the company used to convey the message.

By applying omnichannel programmatic solutions, a company can benefit in many ways. First, it can integrate data from several channels. Hence, it leads to a better understanding of key target audiences and a more customized user experience. Moreover, programmatic platforms allow campaigns to be optimized in real-time based on data collected across different marketing channels.

Second, a holistic marketing strategy means marketers can build a quality funnel and reach goals on every level, from awareness to conversion.

Third, a cohesive strategy with an embedded programmatic approach saves money, time, and effort. No more discrepancies between messages and channels. And no more redundant ads.

Are you already convinced that programmatic advertising is worth being a part of your omnichannel strategy? Let’s take a closer look at the concepts you’ll need to know to implement a new approach.

A Single Customer View: What’s That?

The key to relevant ads and better customer experience is precisely understanding your audience — and not just an audience as a whole — every single customer. Here, the term “unified customer view”— also known as a single customer view or a unified customer profile — comes into play.

This profile includes all information about a customer, including demographics and contact information, browsing and purchasing history, loyalty program participation history, and previous interactions with a company.

For businesses that execute an omnichannel strategy, it’s essential to base their decisions on a single customer view. How so?

• This tool ensures alignment between different channels. The system behind a unified customer view stores up-to-date information, and all employees use it. It helps create all campaigns and messages.
• With a unified customer view, the opportunities for personalization become almost limitless. Since you know a lot about users, why not customize messaging and their experience?
• Companies can make better decisions because they see the whole customer journey. They know where and how people start interacting with the brand, how they develop awareness, and how they convert. Eventually, this data helps engage and retain customers more efficiently.

Data is the fuel for a unified customer view. Information should be gathered from all available sources, integrated, cleaned, and unified. Companies typically use customer data platforms (CDP) to store and update this data. At any time, marketers and other professionals inside the company can access a unified customer view and get the insights they need.

The better and fresher the data, the more value it can bring to omnichannel programmatic advertising. Here are some examples:

• More precise targeting and retargeting. Segmenting the audience is much easier and more convenient with detailed customer information. Moreover, programmatic algorithms, with the help of data, can retarget customers across other channels. For example, show them an ad on Facebook after they’ve visited the company’s website.
• Dynamic creative optimization. Programmatic advertising allows the modification of various ad elements on the fly, such as messages, images, or CTAs. A unified customer view adds more personalization to this process.
• Predicting customers’ behavior. Programmatic platforms can analyze data to identify patterns in people’s behavior and later show them new ads to achieve better outcomes.

Many companies enhance their omnichannel programmatic strategy with a single customer view concept. As a result, they get more leads and conversions and increase their sales. For instance, a customer visits a cosmetic brand’s e-store, browses it, and puts some items in the shopping cart but doesn’t finish the purchase. Later, on another website, they see the ad with a discount offer for their abandoned cart and click on it.

To sum up, a unified customer view can elevate your marketing strategy and help harness the full potential of programmatic advertising.

Crossing the Barriers

Cross-device targeting is another important concept for a company willing to implement an omnichannel marketing strategy. A rising number of families own several smart devices. For instance, the average internet household in the USA owns 17 connected devices, and 66% have a smart TV. Customers enjoy using different devices depending on location, time of day, etc. Hence, brands can collect information about them and reach them across various devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs, etc.).

Cross-channel targeting, a similar concept, engages users across various channels, such as email, display ads, social media, etc. Combined with cross-device targeting, it ensures your marketing strategy remains consistent and relevant, no matter where a customer encounters your ads.

Programmatic advertising plays a vital role in enabling cross-device and cross-channel targeting. After all, programmatic platforms allow data integration from various sources and create a unified customer view across all channels and devices. Later, using this data, platforms will make decisions about displaying ads to a specific person on a particular device and in a specific channel. As a result, marketers can be sure that a customer will see the right message at the right time.

Many technologies and data strategies enable or support cross-device and cross-channel targeting. For example, the abovementioned customer data platforms ensure fresh and complete information about customers; data management platforms collect and organize first-, second-, and third-party data that may be useful for targeting; AI tools can predict users’ behavior and help with optimizing ads across different devices and channels; and a device graph (a data structure, popular and wide-used among digital marketers) creates a “map” connecting users and devices by analyzing browser activity and other types of data.

So, now that you know a lot about necessary concepts, it’s time to understand how to integrate programmatic advertising into your omnichannel strategy. Here are some tips:

• Begin with integrating and analyzing data from existing channels and creating a unified customer view. If you haven’t implemented a customer data platform or a data management platform before, it’s time to do it.
• Segment your audience. The accumulated data will help you define the top customer segments you’ll reach via different channels and devices according to your marketing strategy.
• Create a cross-channel attribution model to help you understand the value of every channel in your strategy. In general, it determines the contribution of each channel or touchpoint to customer actions (say, conversions). 
• Choose a demand-side platform (DSP) that suits your marketing strategy needs.
• Don’t forget about non-digital channels. Make sure messages there are aligned with programmatic ads. Also, you can use data gathered via programmatic tools to improve non-programmatic advertising.
• Define the goals you’d like to achieve with programmatic advertising help, choose the proper metrics, and find ways to track them. Also, decide on the frequency of evaluating the progress toward the goal.

Cross-device targeting can be a powerful tool, especially if you analyze your data thoroughly. For example, the data may give you a hint: conversion rates for your product or service are higher on desktop PCs. In this case, you can put more effort into targeting your customers when they use computers instead of mobile devices.

A Yardstick for Every Campaign

A carefully planned and well-executed omnichannel strategy can save your company money, time, and effort. Still, measuring the progress and analyzing the collected data is essential to achieve positive results. In this case, you’ll be able to:

• Optimize the ads’ performance, modify them, and increase the critical success metrics.
• Allocate your marketing budget wisely, avoiding less effective channels and methods.
• Increase the targeting and retargeting quality and personalize your ads.

Ultimately, your omnichannel strategy can be a powerful competitive advantage—but only if you can effectively collect, analyze, and leverage the data.

What metrics should you track? There are numerous KPIs for omnichannel programmatic campaigns. You can start with these options:

• Click-through rate (CTR) by channel. This engagement metric shows the ratio of clicks on the link to the total amount of impressions. If your CTR is high, your ad is relevant to your target audience.
• Conversion rate by channel. You can calculate it by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of visits. Another helpful metric is a cross-channel conversion rate (the number of conversions divided by the number of customers engaged with your omnichannel marketing strategy).
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It’s calculated as the customer value multiplied by the average customer lifespan. Also, measuring the CLV-to-customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio makes sense.
• Customer loyalty score (CLS). This metric shows the number of customers loyal to your brand over time.  
• Customer satisfaction score (CSS). Typically, companies evaluate it via customer surveys and then make conclusions about the performance of the omnichannel strategy.

You can measure a campaign’s impact with multiple tools. For example, Google Analytics 360 tracks cross-device and cross-channel metrics, SurveyMonkey helps create surveys to calculate the customer satisfaction score, and Google Attribution 360 offers data-driven attribution across different channels. Your company can choose the set of tools and methods based on campaign goals – and enjoy the feeling of being in control of its impact.

P.S. Programmatic Advertising is for Everyone

Now that you’ve read the article, you know the benefits of integrating programmatic advertising into your omnichannel marketing strategy. Among other, this approach provides: 

• More opportunities for data-driven customization across all your channels in real time.
• Better value for money: you pay for relevant ads for the right audience.
• Optimization that can be done at any minute while ads are running.
• Aligned content in all marketing channels.
• A deeper understanding of your customers and their journey with your company.

To get the most out of an omnichannel strategy, it’s important to uncover the potential of a unified customer view (to collect, store, and utilize the key data about your audience), cross-device targeting (to reach customers wherever they go), and measuring the campaign outcomes (to know how successfully you’re doing). 

Programmatic advertising isn’t rocket science. It requires understanding some fundamentals, but the benefits it may provide are so worth the effort.  If you’re looking for a way to elevate your customer experience and amplify the results of your omnichannel strategy, programmatic advertising is the right step to take.