Why Recency Matters in Programmatic Advertising

As a seasoned marketer, by now you’re well aware of the value of relevant audiences. When it comes to quantifiable results, nothing is more important than putting the right offer in front of the right eyeballs. How do you know the audiences you’re targeting with programmatic advertising are indeed relevant?

Of course, there is SEM. Setting your strategy to “narrow” match will most likely, after some conversion optimization, gross you a scale of positive results… unless, however, the vertical you’re in is saturated and overpriced. How do you supplement small SEM wins with a larger scale approach?

Display is often overlooked by performance marketers. Traditionally, the assumption of poor DRM traction was correct. Although one of the only mediums offering vast libraries of seemingly relevant targets, direct response marketers are quickly disappointed by the underwhelming performance. Why? The answer is…recency.

Let’s say you’ve paid for an in-market data segment of prospects with a high propensity of buying your product or service. How did those consumers end up in your target segment? They were added by exhibiting certain online behaviors (or so you have been told) identifying them as “interested” — either contextually, through past interactions with a similar product, or simply because they exhibited other behaviors non-related directly to your offer, but similar to your core audience.

In a nutshell, these consumers were at some point interested in what you’re selling.

But when exactly was person X added to the bucket? Six months ago? Two years? By default, “persistent” cookies do not expire. Which means, if person X purchased a watch eight months ago, and has subsequently been seen as active anywhere on the web – then that consumer would still be in that segment.

So targeting that person with an offer to buy a similar product is in no way more beneficial to a marketer than prospecting fresh new audiences, as inevitably, most customers who were in-market have already transacted.

So what is a marketer to do? The solution is an additional filtering parameter of recency.

Understanding your conversion timing and laying that criteria over other targeting strategies will bridge the gap in your display efforts.

This means you can target only those users who meet your sales cycle requirements, so you can reach person X immediately after they looked at that watch and stop wasting your ad budget on them after ten hours or longer.

This means you can stop wasting your ad spend on people who are no longer in market for what you are selling.

Looking for more help improving the relevancy of your ads, to reach the right audience at the right time? AUDIENCEX is the largest independent trading desk in the world, connected with 12+ enterprise-level DSPs so you can reach the right audience at the right time, and add recency parameters to each campaign.

Ready To Grow? Let’s Talk!

Get the Guide: 5 Steps to Prepare for the Loss of Third-Party Cookies

In preparation for what’s to come, we’ve created a guide with 5 ways to plan your programmatic advertising strategy without the use of third-party cookies.

Fill out the form below to download the guide.