What is Programmatic Advertising? And How Can it Help My Affiliate Program Work?

The affiliate program landscape is ever evolving. There are new terms and new processes to get to grips with every week. And one of the most interesting recent developments is programmatic advertising. But what actually is programmatic advertising? And how can you use it to improve your affiliate program performance?

How Programmatic Advertising Could Help when Working with Affiliate Programs

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is basically the automated buying and selling of online advertising. Working with a programmatic platform, you can specify a set of criteria that best suits your needs. Then the platform will use algorithms to target your ideal audience. This means, you only pay for the ads that are put in front of the right people, at the right time. These platforms not only help to make advertising quicker and easier to manage, but can also make your budget go further.

How can I use programmatic advertising for my affiliate program work?

If you’re working with an affiliate partnership program to monetise a blog or website, your primary goal is to get your affiliate network’s offers seen by interested parties. And your first step is to find a useful traffic source. There are a whole range of options for you to choose from. And there are many free traffic sources available. From social media to search engines. And they’re all worth exploring. The main difference that programmatic advertising brings is that you’re guaranteed to reach the right audience without hours of effort.

So, what benefits could programmatic adverting bring to your pay per sale affiliate enterprise?

The five best features of programmatic advertising for affiliate program members

1. You only pay for ads that are delivered to the right audience.
2. Because your advertising space is being purchased buy an algorithm, you don’t have to worry about research. The tech is designed to automatically optimize advertisement placement. Saving you time and effort, while maximizing ad efficiency.
3. Programmatic advertising platforms will segment your customer or target base. This means that you can uniquely target each advert. So, let’s say that you’re looking for dating traffic, for example. You’ll have different ads prepared for male and female customers. And you will want to segment by different age groups. Just tell the programmatic platform who you want each ad type to be seen by. And the tech will do the rest.
4. The platforms have a variety of other targeting features too. You can work by target type, location, device type, post time, target interest… Pretty much any criteria you can think of.
5. It’s a really easy way to manage your advertising. One of the most difficult things for new online affiliate program members is tracking and managing advertising. Remembering what you put where, how much you paid for it, and working out what your return on investment might have been. With programmatic advertising, you’re covering a whole range of traffic sources, with [potentially] a whole range of ads. But you’re managing everything from one place. So, it’s easy to keep your budget under control. And to track your performance.

In conclusion

Starting out with affiliate programs isn’t always easy. Programmatic advertising has the potential to help. It won’t be for everyone. For starters, there’s a fee involved. And for a lot of people, that’s just not an option, especially in the early days. But as you progress and start to make money, or start working with a number of different affiliate programs at the same time, spending money to make money begins to make sense. If you have plenty of time and patience, and a strong understanding of advertising practices, you may not need a programmatic advertising platform. But if you are short on any of those things, it might be worth looking into.