The Importance of Being Transparent - Programmatic

We firmly believe in transparency, and when it comes to digital marketing, even more. Let's not deny the obvious thing here, there has always been a bit of a black box within the display industry. I have some good news though, the black box is now… guess what? Transparent!

At Periscopix, we run our programmatic campaigns via DoubleClick. We use DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) as our ad server, DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) as the Demand Side Platform (DSP), and DoubleClick Studio to upload rich media creatives. The integration of the three of them is complete and the capabilities almost endless.

When it comes to reporting there are more than 35 dimensions available and around 50 metrics to look at, that's without counting the extra 15 metrics you have available for video campaigns. This basically means that we have a great visibility if not total of what's going on with our programmatic campaigns, because we have transparent reports on placements, performance and costs.

Wait, what do you mean by placements, performance and costs? I hear you. Let's go a bit deeper:

Placements

We can pull what are called placement reports. For instance, we'll be able to see the number of impressions, clicks or conversions we're getting from all the websites where our ads are appearing. Bear in mind that via DoubleClick we have access to more than 800 million websites, and trust me, we definitely want to know how every single one of those sites is performing.

Performance

We want to provide clients with all the info that they need to know in order to make the right marketing decisions. For instance, do clients want to have a breakdown between post-click and post-view conversions? What about how each creative is doing? Or maybe understand the value of each targeting method and/or marketing channel when it comes to attribution. Well, we can have it all.

Costs

We have full visibility of the costs. There are a few fees that need to be taken into consideration when running programmatic campaigns, but again, the interface is so transparent that we can see all of them within two clicks. We can see how much we are spending for the use of DCM, the use of DBM, or the use of third-party data providers (needed to reach the right audiences). Agencies can even add their management fees within the system as a mark-up. This is great because if clients want to know the CPA of their campaigns with and without the management fee, they could easily pull a report and see the difference.

Conclusion

I personally know there are hundreds of options out there for potential clients to look at before making the decision of how they want their programmatic campaigns to be run, from agencies, to ad servers or demand side platforms. It won't be me who will try to sell any of those, but if I could give only one piece of advice to a potential client it would be this: Wherever you go and whatever you decide, make sure that you say the magic words to the sales people: "Be transparent my friend".

To view the article as written by Sergio Lopez, please visit Periscopix's website.