Businesses need to protect their brands and make the most of their reduced advertising budgets as the world heads towards a severe recession amid the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. 

Timmy Bankole, the South China Morning Post’s associate director of digital operations, shared his advice and insights into how programmatic advertising can help marketers during a webinar titled “Best Practices for Programmatic Advertising during Unusual Times”.

Bankole started by introducing the Mobile First Strategy, which requires brands to clearly understand mobile programmatic metrics and user experiences. 

Studies show that 50 per cent of all global web traffic occurs on mobile phones, and that mobile users spend more than 90 per cent of their time online within an app. 

Bankole said it is essential for marketers to ensure that their creatives – ads that users see on websites and apps –  such as short-form videos and engaging images are made for the right devices.

“From a programmatic standpoint, you have the reach to get to many people, you also have rich data signals and you also get to make the best out of the in-app environment,” Bankole said, adding that mobile app-targeting is very useful for building profiles to further find audiences and improve return on investment (ROI).

Bankole offered a number of best-practice recommendations that brands can follow to improve their programmatic advertising strategies:

• Avoid cheap inventory, as lowering bids could lead not only to allegations of fraud, but also reduce reach into quality audiences
• Build direct relationships with publisher partners
• Buy from trusted sellers to serve your inventory
• Invest in advertising technology  to ensure your pairing is in the right environment
• Programmatic ensures reach and engagement, but a blanket approach to brand safety counteracts it
• Brand suitability provides better options for brands to place their ads
• Set realistic key performance indicators and look beyond the clicks
• Metrics such as viewability and time on page are key engagement benchmarks, which should be coupled with clicks to show true ROI, rather than simply clicks
• Create a strong attribution model that ensures synergy between different platforms
• Tailored creative ads can lead to at least a four-times-higher performance
• Create and execute a data-led approach to target audiences
• Take personalisation one step further with dynamic personalisation user experience (UX)

A recording of the webinar is available on the slider. Contact us at amsgeneral@e.scmp.com to get a copy of the presentation.