Digitization is at the center of the ongoing evolution of the advertising industry, employing new and innovative tools to best meet growing customer demands. As technology continues to infiltrate every aspect of society, advertising isn’t spared. However, in spite of the rapid changes seen over the last decade, today’s world is even more unpredictable than ever before and with the rapid spread of COVID-19, it has left no industry untouched, including advertising.
While self-service advertising platforms have been growing in popularity in recent years, convenience is more important now than ever before for businesses of all sizes. With social distancing and business closures leading advertisers and agencies to take new approaches to the normal course of business, this rising trend is affecting an increasing number of businesses.
Self-serve advertising is the ability of an advertiser to place their own ads without the assistance of an advertising sales representative. Self-serve is available on multiple platforms from Google to Snapchat and allows for fast, easy purchasing and rapid campaign launches while reducing costs as well as providing advertisers more convenience in the placement of their advertisements. This is a relatively new approach to advertising — something that does make those in more traditional roles a little concerned — but is a concept that is only growing in popularity, not shrinking.
Self-service provides major advantages and can benefit everyone involved in the ad sales equation. We identify the top six reasons to love what self-serve advertising platforms can do.
1. Additional Control Over Ad Sales
The person-to-person methods in conventional advertising are undoubtedly effective, but there is often pressure on both sides to come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial. A self-serve ad platform, however, puts all control in the hands of the user i.e, the advertiser. It is now possible to customize every aspect of any advertising strategy, from frequency to audience targeting, to even where your advertisements will appear on certain websites, without requiring the normal interpersonal processes to take a campaign from concept to reality.
The control doesn’t end when the purchase process does, for example, if something in a campaign isn’t working properly, it’s easy to go back and make changes and adjustments at the click of a button. With self-serve advertising, the ability to switch directions seamlessly can save both time and money while removing the strain of improving and adapting campaigns over time.
2. Save Time and Reduce Costs
The advertising process isn’t normally fast or cheap, particularly when organizations are forced to find the correct balance between allocating time to low budget clients while still prioritizing the bigger spenders. Many businesses seem to have one thing in common — that they are starving for time. This lack of time ultimately allows only a small portion of time to be devoted specifically to online advertising. This lack of time makes online advertising platforms particularly beneficial especially when they provide key features which are simple to use.
Therefore, a self-serve ad platform can minimize the time required for clients with a lower budget while still meeting their needs without compromising priority clients. This can yield an increase in market share without increasing any internal expenses. This also allows these customers to manage their own media inventory and campaigns, driving healthy profits without over-burdening sales representatives.
3. Maximize Your Campaign Effectiveness
All advertising, for even the smallest of campaigns, have a budget. The introduction of technology makes maximizing a budget easier than ever before, replacing the spray-and-pray method of years past that wasted both time and money. As advertisers understand the importance of demographic targeting such as age, gender, geographical location and more, they can increase their chances of buying advertisements that make a difference to profit margins. Self-serving enables advertisers to manage all of these demographic & contextual targeting options for their individual budget to ensure that they are maximizing their campaign effectiveness and profitability.
Targeted advertising campaigns makes it much easier to maximize your campaign effectiveness while minimizing spend. Self-serve platforms allow for fast and easy targeting, creating an environment in which every facet of a target demographic can be planned in advance for a maximum ROI.
4. 24/7 Access Available
Under normal circumstances, making changes, placing new orders, or executing campaigns requires speaking with a salesperson — something that can limit both time and the ease of making changes or launching something new.
With the introduction of self-service platforms, advertisers can access their ads and campaigns and make changes to them as needed, without waiting for a sales rep or ad ops specialist. Advertisers can work to their own campaign schedule and quickly update and optimize their campaigns without being held up due to the busy schedules of campaign execution partners.
This can allow for small organizations to best prioritize their resources or larger ones to test concepts and launch new campaigns as needed, whether at noon or midnight — or anywhere in between. This round the clock access can provide a major advantage to organizations to save both time and money in the long run.
5. Constant Evolution of Platforms
Self-serve advertising is a very new approach in the world of online advertising. It’s not exactly an established practice, which means the opportunities and options are always changing with plenty of room for expansion and growth. As a concept in its infancy, there’s a lot of room for self-serve resources to grow, develop, and provide even more benefits to users as time goes on.
Many businesses already appreciate self-serve solutions for media buying and ad management, but as these strategies become more innovative, we will continue to see an increase in popularity and evolution of these kinds of platforms. Users who are familiar with what self-serve has to offer from the start will be in the best possible position as future innovations roll out. When knowledge of the system is already in place, advertisers will be able to take advantage without delay.
6. Provides Ample Options
Finding the right approach to advertising is never easy, and there’s not always one single path that works at any given time. Previously, there was no perfect way to test the efficacy of ideas and options prior to launching a large campaign, creating a potentially costly logistical issue.
Self-serve advertising is one of these options, and it can be a great way to test variable strategies without a large investment of either time or money. This approach allows for the measurement of different advertising opportunities, implementation of quick alterations, and a way to pivot strategies to best suit the needs of different clients or audiences.
The more you learn while testing different advertising opportunities, the more you can alter your marketing strategy to suit the needs of a specific client or target audiences without having to worry about paying extra to start the entire process from scratch.
Should You Try A Self-Serve Advertising Platform?
As the options available in advertising continue to grow and change, it’s not always easy to know what has value and what does not. However, self-serve options can carry a lot of value for those who understand the opportunities. With higher levels of control, increased flexibility, and a way to maximize revenue, breaking into the self-serve market can be an advantage from which many companies can benefit.
Originally published at www.advendio.com on May 19, 2020
