As is the case with many buzzwords, omnichannel can sound deceptively simple at first. Buyers conduct their journey via a variety of channels that cross mobile, video, display and social. Marketers – and their programmatic partner – are left trying to figure out what campaigns are resonating with those buyers, where to allocate budget, how to make adjustments that improve performance regardless of the channel and, by the way, keep it as seamless as possible. Whew! That’s a lot for a marketer to do that’s probably already taxed on time.
Taking it a step further, this quest for multi-channel delivery and performance in programmatic advertising has created some problems that look more chaotic than complementary. Here’s why: as a company’s media budget is split between mobile, video, display, and social, causing their digital agency partner to often turn to one vendor for mobile, another one for display, another one for video and so on. All of those vendors means the company is soon…
splitting its budget between an array of platforms and vendors
dealing with multiple integrations and purchasing contracts
working with multiple interfaces for campaigns and systems
sorting through multiple reporting engines which don’t talk to each other
missing a huge opportunity for centralized optimizations (more on that later).
It’s also that much more challenging to make effective decisions. Usually, after the initial campaign results come in, the company’s budget is reallocated amongst media types and/or vendors. But with so many different systems in play, data typically sits in silos, preventing a complete insight overview. Those vendors will each have their own decisioning engine, true, but those processes will be aimed at creating the best performance for specific media types – not the program as a whole.
Do you see the conflict? Omnichannel is supposed to make it simple to automatically allocate budget to the most effective impressions across all media types and devices. But the discordance behind the scenes – and lack of a centralized way to make sense of it all – leaves marketers with a lack of clarity, an inefficient use of budget and a challenge in applying lessons learned across all channels.
Why One Platform = Smarter Decisions
Remember in the bullet points above we talked about a huge opportunity for centralization? This is what we meant:
If there’s one requirement for programmatic success, it’s swiftness. Allocation decisions need to be made fast, not after results are collected and compared between different interfaces. Marketers need to know in real time which ads, devices or media types are performing (or not) and then optimize accordingly on behalf of their client. Deriving insight can’t be scheduled for a later date. And because buyers have different responses to different media at different times, they need a fully nuanced picture from their data instead of extrapolating insights from random data snapshots.
That’s why more and more marketing professionals have realized they need a single platform optimization engine to make omni-channel work effectively for their clients. Tailoring appropriate messages by timing and channel requires a cohesive, all-encompassing data picture. Only then can it be understood which impressions, which media, which devices and what locations are performing – and when. Those are the insights they need – and that Simpli.fi can offer – to steer program performance as a whole and reallocate budgets to the most effective impressions and relevant content.
Programmatic can only work its full magic when it operates with speed and agility. Advertisers that want to really drive campaign ROI will find their strongest results by using one omni-channel platform, like Simpli.fi. Let us help you and your clients create intelligent strategies that help you reach your programmatic goals – and avoid the multi-vendor chaos.
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