Are You Buying Ads Directly from Publishers? Take Advantage of the Benefits of Programmatic. A Case Study from the Cosmetics Industry

The client was engaged in advertising efforts with several different publishers using a flat-fee model (a fixed rate for displaying the ad for a specific period on the publisher’s website). The main challenge was the need to control these fragmented activities, which required a considerable amount of time. Another issue was the billing system—it did not take into account the actual number of impressions or clicks on the ad.

What Did We Do?

We recommended setting up an account in the AdForm system, which is at the forefront of programmatic advertising technology and adapted to a cookieless environment.

We negotiated with publishers to create a network of private deals. Additionally, we developed a dedicated environment that enabled the display of ads at a lower rate than the market price, with a broad reach and a well-defined target audience within specific domains.

This also allowed us to take advantage of exclusive placements, pinpointing the exact spots on the publisher’s domain where we wanted the ad to appear (e.g., on the homepage).

What Did We Achieve?

First and foremost, we provided convenience and significant optimization of the advertising budget. Below is a comparison between two billing models:

• Flat fee (daily impressions), which is the most commonly offered by publishers (and had been used by our client),
• Preferred deal, which we, as an agency, negotiated directly with publishers.

Publisher X (flat-fee, CPM 25 PLN, budget 15,000 PLN)

• Number of impressions: 600,000
• Average CTR: 0.1% (600 clicks)
• Reach: Unknown; frequent multiple impressions of the same banner to the same user or impressions completely outside good viewability areas.

Publisher X (preferred deal, CPM 6.2 PLN, budget 15,000 PLN)

• Number of impressions: 2,419,354
• Average CTR: 0.2% (4,839 clicks)
• Reach: About 42% unique impressions (over 967,000) and viewability of about 70-80%.

By creating a programmatic environment, we optimized the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) by more than 75% and achieved a higher CTR (click-through rate).

Most importantly, we were able to guarantee the client better viewability (actual visibility), reaching up to 80%.

Pro Tip from a Specialist:

Be cautious with flat-fee billing! It is the most frequently offered ad serving model by publishers, but also the least efficient. With flat-fee impressions and CPM billing, you never have a guarantee that your ad will be displayed in a visible area of the browser (leading to impressions with low viewability).