Omnichannel Media Buying Platform – By Rahil Shaikh

Digital media agencies currently use multiple media buying platforms to execute their digital campaigns to reach their audience across Web, Mobile, CTV & Digital-Out-of-Home via different SSPs. This leads to multiple issues because the features provided across different platforms are not the same and marketers need to adjust their execution strategy as per the platform’s capability.

The budget also needs to be split across different platforms for different channels which adds to additional overhead operational efforts of manually adjusting the budget and optimising the campaigns across multiple platforms.

Challenges of executing campaigns across multiple media buying platforms

1. Low Audience Reach: Different platforms attract different user bases, making it cumbersome to effectively reach and engage the target audience across all channels. Advertisers need to develop strategies to ensure consistent messaging and brand presence while attractive content to suit each platform’s unique characteristics.

2. Channel-specific Campaign optimization: Each platform has its own set of performance metrics, algorithms, and optimization techniques. Advertisers must adapt their strategies and techniques as per the platform needs, which can be time-consuming, complex and could be error prone. Optimizing campaigns across multiple platforms simultaneously requires careful coordination and monitoring.

3. DMPs: Accessing data from various DMPs and unifying campaign performance metrics can be a tedious task. Different platforms may have different tracking mechanisms, data formats, and reporting capabilities. Advertisers & marketers need to ensure data is consistent and accurate while leveraging attribution models for conversions and performance metrics

4. Budget allocation and optimization: Allocating budgets across multiple platforms can be a challenge, especially when each platform requires different investment levels and has varying effectiveness. Advertisers need to make informed decisions on budget allocation based on data insights, ROI analysis, and platform-specific performance metrics.

5. Creative: Modifying creative assets and content to suit each platform’s format, audience preferences, and specifications can be time-consuming and complex. Advertisers need to invest in creative production and optimization processes that enable efficient creative changes based on different platform requirements they are currently using.

7. Campaign Management: Managing different campaigns across various platforms needs a specialized set of skills and expertise. Advertisers need to have a campaign management team or access some managed services companies that provide options to manage their campaigns at a premium fee or a percentage of the spend executed.

8. Ad fraud and viewability: Ad fraud and viewability issues can impact campaign performance across multiple platforms. Advertisers need to implement robust fraud detection measures and ensure viewability standards are met to protect their ad investments and maintain campaign effectiveness.

How can it be Resolved?

Media buying platforms need to adapt to Omnichannel as a strategy in their core product offering. Products need to be scoped out and built to suit the current and the future of the digital advertising ecosystem. Below are some high-level use cases that needs to be addressed to solve the big problem of omnichannel campaign execution for media agencies

1. Users should be able to seamlessly execute campaigns for all the available media channels such as Web, Mobile Web, Mobile In-App, Connected TV (CTV), and Digital-Out-of-Home
2. Marketers start with the upper funnel campaigns which are mainly marketing campaigns to generate awareness of the product or services and they can start with CTV and Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH)

3. Once they have generated enough interest amongst the audience, they can then launch a performance campaign across Web, Mobile, Web & Mobile In-App
   1. There can be a variety of performance metrics depending upon the type of campaign creative.
   2. For Display Banner campaigns, it could be Clicks and CTR whereas for Video campaigns it will be total number of video views and completed view.
4. After executing campaigns across multiple channels and with different types of creatives, it will help marketers to generate their audience pool.
5. Reporting should give a drill down of the audience that have been exposed to the campaigns in a DOOH or CTV environment and the same can be retargeted for performance campaigns on Web, Mobile Web & Mobile In-App environment.
6. Marketers can then launch a retargeting campaign and look for conversion and more.
7. Single platform to execute multiple campaigns will help the marketers to easily track the campaigns performance and optimize it seamlessly.
8. A unified view of all the campaigns and their performance is something that the marketers have been rooting for long and it is high time that this problem needs to be addressed by the industry.
9. Users should be able to have an end-to-end workflow from setting up campaigns to viewing the performance reports and then optimizing the campaigns based on the reports.
10. Marketers should also be able to set alerts for any specific metrics or undesired results that can help them to proactively take informed decisions.

Benefits of Omnichannel Media Buying Platform

Unified campaign management: An omnichannel media buying platform provides a centralized interface for managing all of media campaigns across multiple channels. Advertisers can plan, execute, and optimize their campaigns from a single interface, thereby increasing the efficiency of execution and optimization.

Advanced Audience Targeting: An omnichannel media buying platform enables advertisers to leverage data and analytics to define and reach specific audience segments across multiple channels. It allows for precise audience targeting based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and location, resulting in more relevant and personalized advertising experiences.

Balanced budget allocation: Advertisers can optimize and fine-tune their campaign budgets by allocating resources effectively across different channels. The omnichannel media buying platform helps advertisers maximize the impact of their media spend and achieve higher ROI on their spend and reach target audience.

Automation capabilities: Many omnichannel media buying platforms incorporate automation features to repeat the same campaign optimization tactics that was implied earlier that gave desired results. 

Flexibility: An omnichannel media buying platform provides flexibility, allowing advertisers to manage campaigns across multiple channels, Geo, formats and ad types. It offers evolving market trends, audience preferences, and new advertising opportunities, ensuring campaigns stay relevant and effective over time.

About Author :-

Rahil Shaikh is a Product Management professional with expertise in building SaaS, PaaS, B2B and consumer facing B2C platforms. Vast experience in Programmatic advertising, building ad serving and brand safety solutions for publishers & media buyers across Web, Mobile Web, Mobile App, CTV, OTT and Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH)