Programmatic display advertising, aimed at the people most likely to buy.
Banner ads on the websites and apps your customers already use, bought one impression at a time and shown only to the audience and the area you choose.
- Aimed at people, not at websites. The ad follows the audience you describe wherever they are reading.
- $2,500 to $5,000 a month in media is where most campaigns start.
- A report every month on what ran, where it ran and what it did.
What programmatic display advertising is
Display advertising is the banner and image ads you see beside articles, inside apps and on news sites. Programmatic is how those ads are bought: in an automated auction that runs in the moment a page loads, one impression at a time, instead of a booking with one publisher.
That changes what you are buying. A direct buy rents a space on one website and hopes your customers visit it. A programmatic buy follows an audience across millions of sites and apps, so the ad reaches the person you described wherever they happen to be.
So the two words are not rivals. Display is the kind of ad. Programmatic is the way it is bought and aimed. It also reaches further than any single company's ad network, with our own targeting and fraud screening on top.
The right ad, on the right screen, at the right moment.
How a display campaign runs
- Describe the buyer
Who buys from you, where they live, and what they have been reading and shopping for. That description becomes the audience.
- Draw the area
A metro, a list of zip codes or a radius around your location. Nothing is spent outside it.
- Size the ads
The same message is set for phone, tablet and desktop, so it fits wherever it lands.
- Launch and read it early
Display is one of the faster channels to read. Placement and audience results come in from the first week, and budget moves toward what is working.
- Report
Every month you see impressions, clicks, and the placements and ads that earned them.
Who the ads can be aimed at
One campaign can use several of these at once.
- People by what they read and shop for
- Pages about a subject you choose
- A metro, zip codes or a radius
- Your own customer list
- People who visited your website
- People who visited a competitor's location
Behavioral targeting reaches people by what they have been doing online. Contextual targeting places the ad beside content on a subject you choose. Most campaigns use both, inside an area you set.
What it costs to start
$2,500 to $5,000a month in media is where most campaigns start.
A tight area, such as a few zip codes or one neighborhood, works at the low end. A whole metro, several markets or a statewide plan needs more.
Below that it can run. It just does not reach enough of the right people often enough to tell you whether it worked.
You get a plan with the maths before you are asked to spend anything.
What a banner ad can and cannot prove
Few people click a banner and buy on the spot. They see it, and later they search your name, come back to your site or walk in. A report that only counts clicks misses most of that.
So the report shows impressions and clicks, and where the business has something countable we count it. In past campaigns that has meant online orders checked by order ID, and store visits counted by location.
Finding new online buyers for a supplement company
An international nutritional supplement company. 4 months.
A supplement company wanted new online buyers. We built an audience that resembled its existing customers and showed it display ads for four months.
- Purchases
- 297
- Impressions
- 2,946,879
Copied from the case study we published at the time. The client's name is withheld. A past result is not a forecast: yours will depend on your market, your budget and your offer.
Read how it was run and counted
In another, a furniture chain ran display ads for six weeks to people who had visited competing stores, and counted the showroom visits. See that one too.
It runs well behind a TV commercial
Display works well behind a TV commercial. In one published campaign we ran Connected TV with display banners for an online retailer and checked the orders by order ID.
See Connected TVSell it under your own brand
Your agency keeps the client and the margin. We plan it, buy it and run it, and the report carries your logo.
The white-label versionProgrammatic Display across Minnesota
26 Minnesota markets, each with its own local page. We run campaigns anywhere in the country.
Related services
Questions people ask
What people want to know before they start, answered the way we would answer on a call.
What is the difference between programmatic and display advertising?
Display is the kind of ad: a banner or image on a website or in an app. Programmatic is the way it is bought, through an automated auction for each impression, aimed at an audience rather than booked on one site. Most display advertising today is bought programmatically.
How much does programmatic display advertising cost?
Most campaigns we run start at $2,500 to $5,000 a month in media. A tight area works at the low end, and a whole metro or several markets needs more. Below that it can run, but it will not reach enough of the right people often enough to judge.
What sizes do programmatic display ads come in?
The common ones are 300 by 250, 728 by 90, 160 by 600 and 300 by 600 on a computer, and 320 by 50 on a phone. A campaign usually carries the same message in several of them so it fits whatever space comes up.
Does programmatic display work for a local business?
Yes. The area can be as small as a few zip codes or a radius around your location, and nothing is spent outside it. The smaller the area, the further a modest budget goes.
What exactly is programmatic display?
Display ads bought and placed in real time through an auction, rather than booked with one publisher. It's how we reach the right person on whichever site or app they happen to be using, instead of guessing where they'll show up.
How is this different from running ads through one platform's own network?
Programmatic buying reaches inventory across the open web and app ecosystem, not one company's network, with our own targeting and fraud screening layered on top rather than whatever the platform decides to show.
How quickly does it start producing data?
Within days of launch. Display is one of the faster channels to read — we're watching placement and audience performance from week one and shifting budget toward what's working.
Tell us the area and the budget. We will show you the plan.
Tell us your goals. We'll show you the plan — and the numbers behind it.