What is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising uses automated systems and auctions to buy and sell ad inventory across the open web and CTV. It replaces manual IOs with software-driven buying. It’s the connective tissue between your audiences and inventory you can’t reach on walled gardens alone. With the right guardrails, it expands reach without sacrificing control.
Understanding Programmatic Advertising
At its core, programmatic is about efficiency and scale: reaching audiences across thousands of sites and apps via DSPs, exchanging bids in milliseconds. It’s complementary to walled gardens (Meta, TikTok) and increasingly relevant with retail media and CTV. Clear measurement and brand safety guardrails keep experiments from turning into waste. Frequency and geo controls let you shape delivery quality as you scale. Product data increasingly powers relevance beyond social.
Expect more formats to become feed‑aware. Product data now informs both display and CTV templates so your catalog travels with you across channels. Audiences, context, and catalog details combine to raise intent and AOV. Consistency in taxonomy and naming makes cross‑channel learning faster. With the right setup, programmatic extends what already works, not replace it.
Why it matters
Programmatic gives you more places to show up and more levers to tune, which expands reach without abandoning control. When paired with first‑party data, it can uncover incremental customers that walled gardens miss. Clean measurement and safety lists keep returns healthy while you scale.
- Scale: Access inventory you won’t reach on social alone.
- Control: Granular settings for frequency, geography, content categories.
- Formats: Display, video, native, CTV—more surfaces for catalog creative.
How it works
Programmatic advertising works by running real‑time auctions for impressions across publisher inventory, with DSPs bidding based on audience, context, and predicted value. SSPs provide supply while exchanges match buyers and sellers at scale in milliseconds. A working pixel/CAPI stack grounds measurement so winners are real, not noise. Allow/block lists and brand safety settings protect where you appear. Frequency and geo controls shape delivery quality and reduce fatigue. Bringing a clean product feed enables dynamic creative for relevance across display and CTV.
Catalog angle:
- Product feeds and dynamic templates enable prospecting and retargeting across programmatic display and CTV.
- CTV “catalog” formats highlight top sellers, discounts, or reviews in simple video templates.
