How B2B programmatic advertising can transform your marketing strategy

The importance of B2B programmatic advertising is growing as refined, highly targeted marketing strategies become an increasing priority for businesses.

Programmatic advertising solutions like Clear Channel’s LaunchPAD automate ad buying and placements, streamlining the process and offering greater efficiency and precision in reaching target audiences. Here’s how you can maximise its potential across digital and Out of Home (OOH) advertising formats to transform your marketing efforts.

What is B2B Programmatic Advertising?

B2B programmatic advertising is a type of digital marketing that involves the buying and selling of advertising space using automation. With this technology, B2B businesses can deliver highly targeted ads more quickly and efficiently to their target audiences.

The Basics of Programmatic Ad Buying

Programmatic advertising matches buyers to ad inventory based on a set of predefined targeting parameters. The underlying technology relies on advanced algorithms that quickly scan available ad inventory and analyse audience data to find suitable placements.

Once a match is found, the programmatic platform automatically places a bid for the ad space on behalf of the advertiser. If the bid wins this real-time auction, the buyer’s ad is displayed to the audience.

How Programmatic Advertising Differs in B2B

B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B programmatic advertising follow the same basic process, with some key differences in targeting. While B2C businesses typically target individual consumers with short-term campaigns, B2B businesses can use this data-driven method to target business decision-makers and professionals over longer sales cycles.

Common Platforms for B2B Programmatic Advertising

As a B2B business, there are a variety of programmatic platforms you can use to reach your target audiences across different channels. Some of the most popular include:

• LinkedIn – the world’s largest professional network offers B2B programmatic advertising for display ads.

• Google – Google’s ad platform offers programmatic ad buying for a range of formats, including display, video and rich media.

• OOH platforms – digital OOH platforms like Clear Channel use programmatic technology to target B2B audiences through digital billboards and screens.

Key Benefits of B2B Programmatic Advertising

There are several major advantages to be gained from using B2B programmatic advertising in your marketing strategy.

Precision Targeting of Business Audiences

Programmatic advertising combines data and advanced analytics to offer unprecedented accuracy in audience targeting. Using a variety of data sources, including online and real-world behaviour, programmatic platforms create highly defined audience segments to match your targeting criteria.

This means you can target specific industries and companies, as well as the actual decision-makers who have influence over purchasing decisions. For example, Clear Channel’s RADAR audience planning tool lets you target over 500 audience segments, ensuring pinpoint accuracy in your B2B programmatic advertising campaign.

Increased Efficiency and Cost Savings

Automating the ad buying process improves efficiency in multiple ways. Manual work is drastically reduced, freeing up time to be spent on other marketing efforts, and advertising can be more easily scaled without the need for additional resources.

Programmatic advertising also reduces wasted ad spend by ensuring that you only pay for the impressions and clicks that you really want. By displaying ads only to the most relevant audiences, you gain higher quality leads which improves overall return on investment (ROI).

Real-Time Optimisation and Adjustments

B2B programmatic advertising is a process that happens in real-time, meaning you have the control to change your strategy at any point. By analysing live performance data, you can make strategic adjustments to your campaign bidding, targeting and creatives to optimise performance going forward.

How to Implement Programmatic Advertising in B2B Marketing

Here’s how you can leverage the benefits of programmatic advertising by incorporating it into your B2B marketing strategy.

Define Your Target Audience and Goals

B2B programmatic advertising significantly enhances audience targeting – so long as you use it correctly. This means the very first step is to clearly define your target audience and what you aim to achieve from your campaign.

Some common B2B marketing campaign goals include:

• Brand awareness

• Website traffic

• Lead generation

• Conversion rate improvement

• Increased customer retention

Depending on your campaign goals, you can identify the most relevant target audiences using the following characteristics:

• Industry vertical

• Company size

• Job role

• Location

• Specific interests and pain points

• Technology usage

• Buying behaviour

Choosing highly specific targeting criteria that align with your goals will improve the likelihood of running a successful campaign that meets all of your performance targets.

Leverage Data for Better Targeting

Your business’ own first-party data is a valuable source to tap into when refining your audience targeting. Using your website analytics, customer interaction history and customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can identify specific audience segments to target within your campaign.

Most programmatic platforms also incorporate third-party data such as geo-location and online behaviour that can help you reach specific business audiences.

Integrate OOH and Digital Channels for Maximum Reach

Programmatic advertising is mostly associated with online marketing, but it can also be leveraged for real-world channels like OOH. Integrating digital billboards and screens with other digital channels as part of a multi-format programmatic advertising campaign can enhance reach and reinforce brand messaging, resulting in high-impact B2B marketing.

Programmatic OOH: A Game-Changer for B2B Advertising

As B2B marketers look for innovative ways to break out of the saturated online landscape, OOH advertising offers a game-changing solution. The powerful combination of programmatic capabilities with OOH formats allows you to reach business audiences with targeted and flexible campaigns that can’t help but grab attention.

Reaching Business Audiences in High-Traffic Locations

Programmatic digital OOH connects your brand with professional audiences while they’re on their commute, out on their lunch break or travelling to meetings. You can promote your services on premium digital billboards in:

• key business districts

• high-traffic transit locations

• areas surrounding events and conference venues

Programmatic OOH enables your ads to only be displayed when B2B audiences are likely to be nearby, ensuring engagement is captured from the right people.

Flexibility and Dynamic Ad Delivery

The flexibility of programmatic OOH allows you to deliver timely and contextually relevant messages to B2B audiences. You can update your ads in real-time to reflect changing market conditions, newly-discovered audience insights and even external factors such as weather.

Using time-based targeting parameters, you can adjust your campaign schedule and creative content to specific times of day and days of the week. This means you can deliver tailored messaging that resonates at different periods throughout the day.

Measuring Success with Data-Driven Insights

Tracking campaign success is easy with programmatic OOH. You can access data including audience demographics, impressions and dwell time, allowing you to analyse performance and optimise campaigns in real-time.

With proper attribution modelling, you can connect OOH exposure to leads generated and other key conversion metrics to demonstrate ROI and justify marketing spend.

Examples of Successful B2B Programmatic Advertising Campaigns

We’ve picked out a couple of our favourite examples of businesses using B2B programmatic advertising to achieve their marketing goals. Let’s take a look at what makes Adobe and Chase’s campaigns so successful.

Measuring the Impact of Your B2B Programmatic Advertising Campaign

Measuring the impact of your B2B programmatic advertising campaign is crucial for optimising performance both now and in the future. By knowing which metrics to track, how to leverage real-time data and how to determine ROI, you can leverage the channel to its full potential.

Key Performance Metrics to Track

Every programmatic platform will offer slightly different analytics capabilities, with metrics varying slightly between online and OOH mediums. The key metrics to track for B2B programmatic advertising are:

• Impressions – the number of times your ad has been displayed 

• Engagement rate – the percentage of viewers that have interacted with your ad

• Conversion rate – the percentage of viewers who have taken action after seeing your ad

• Cost-per-lead – the total campaign cost divided by the number of leads generated

Leveraging Real-Time Data for Campaign Adjustments

While post-campaign performance analysis is a necessity, it’s also important to monitor performance while your campaign is still running. Programmatic advertising offers real-time performance data that provides valuable insights you can use to optimise your strategy.

By analysing how your ads are performing while the campaign is still live, you can adjust your targeting, creatives and placements for better results. 

ROI and Long-Term Benefits

B2B is an effective medium for delivering high ROI by driving qualified leads and long-term business relationships through precision targeting. By combining performance data and attribution modelling, you can demonstrate your campaign’s long-term impact on brand awareness and revenue.

Clear Channel is one of the UK’s leading OOH media owners. With over 30,000 outdoor advertising sites reaching 91% of UK adults every fortnight, we can help you reach business audiences all over the UK. To find out more about how B2B programmatic advertising can support your marketing strategy, generate leads and drive ROI, please get in touch for a no-obligation consultation.