- Contest Factory
- August 16, 2022
Media Buying Platforms that Deliver Results
With the evolution of media buying, there is a lot of noise in how and where to buy your media. Although there is a proliferation in available supply side inventory made available to demand side channels, there are still so many options to choose from and knowing who all the players are with specific benefits will help you identify your media partner(s) of choice.
You will most likely have multiple partners as walled gardens like Facebook and Instagram will not allow you to buy inventory outside of their platform. Consider that when you use a 3rd party to publish your content (not algorithm friendly). You will also have non platform buys where it’s part of a direct buy and custom solution.
Here are the heavy hitters in network buy options:
The Google Ads Network inclusive of hundreds of thousands of partners including their very own YouTube and Gmail ad products. The ability to find in-market prospects here is richer than Oprah Winfrey and why PPC ads continue to be the leading conversion platform. This is not to say using it alone would be successful as you need the full funnel to find in-market targets that would consider clicking on your ad.
The Trade Desk is one of the original players in RTB advertising providing access to premium publishers at affordable auction rates. The operate a slick application supporting the demand side where you can bid on a multitude of media options that include data targeting using podcasts, media networks, over the top media ads used on streaming, enthusiast networks, and general news and media sites.
Amazon DSP is one of the most popular demand side platforms on the market by brands and ad agencies, as referenced in an article by Ad Exchanger. Amazon enables advertisers to reach users on Amazon-owned websites like Audible and IMDb, and other Amazon partners. This type of targeting enables multiple exposures across sites to get the behavior change you are looking for.
Adobe Advertising Cloud was born out of products that already existed for different purposes (as well as came through some acquisitions); Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Analytics. These predating products enable you to seamlessly integrate data like Google, making advertising analysis that much easier. Adobe is also said to have superior optimization features enabling you to maximize ROAS better than alternative platforms.
Ad Critter is a demand side platform that is made up of a large network of small businesses. You can imagine the number of services that would love to get in front of this audience. The solution has an ad builder tool with a library of ad templates for businesses that may not have their own creative assets. Media buyers can even designate specific websites they’ll appear on to ensure their ads reach their targeted audience. Additional targeting options include consumers based on demographics and behavior.
Criteo’s platform has access to a large network of premium retailers, making it a great demand side platform for brands who want to reach online shoppers. Think big box, like Macy’s, Best Buy, Walgreens pharmacy, and Kohls. They rely on first-party data to optimize ad sets and determine the perfect timing for engaging the shopping mindset for conversions. Criteo’s easy to use attribution models make data analysis easier for multi-user access to the platform.
Acuity Ads is a unique platform that enables you to map the customer journey and visually identify where in the journey each advertisement should be deployed to this part of the customer journey. The convenient drag and drop interface makes for simple campaign and ad group set up. The journey maps also enable for easy campaign optimizations with detailed graphics making optimizations faster and easier.
Basis has one of the largest inventories on the market with some heavy minimums to make this a not so accessible platform for the beginners. There are managed services available for the monthly spend of $25K. This platform’s artificial intelligence can review over 30 campaign details and suggest optimizations to get the best ROAS.
Choozle is another DSP that provides plenty of targeting options with inventory availability to premium publishers, site list targeting, behavior targeting, third-party data access, and intent data. Their minimum for manages services to support someone new in RTB media buying is $10K; still steep but you may be able to do a test here worth your while.
Ad Colony is a DSP that serves ads directly into mobile apps on both iOS and Android platforms. AdColony has over 90K direct app ad serving integrations and access to 450 million app users; that’s some pretty heavy opportunity. Ad Colony offers multiple creative formats, including interactive, banner, full-screen, and interstitial. This enables marketers to test various ad creative formats to understand which combination of creative and targeting is delivering the best ROAS.
This should get you well on your way to reaching premium publishing sites with affordable ad rates and sophisticated targeting. Should you need professional media buying support, you may always submit an inquiry with Contest Factory.
