Path to Conversion

Modern programmatic advertising makes hyper-precise ad placement possible. You can zero in on exactly the demographic or affinity group you need. But that same precision can limit scale, inflate frequency, and stall growth if you push it too far. A wise man once said: “with great behavioral targeting comes great responsibility for maintaining the entire funnel” or something like that. Balance is what keeps advertising healthy. Here are a few things to keep in mind while finding the sweet spot between reach and precision.

Click-based tracking has never told the whole story, but the customer journey is becoming ever more complicated. Advertisers need better attribution to keep up with the consumer, particularly in offline mediums where attribution is rare. In our latest article published on USA Today, Genius Monkey has partnered with CTM (formally CallTrackingMetrics) to connect impression-level programmatic data with advanced call tracking. This collaboration will provide advertisers with unprecedented levels of attribution, especially in offline mediums.

Prologue People love a good story. Narratives help us make sense of complex ideas, whether it’s an epic fantasy tale or intimate, human drama. Handled well, the right story can teach, uplift, and inspire to action. Advertisers share the same goal; we’re storytellers, crafting a narrative to help consumers understand the brand as a whole. In the task of digital storytelling, there’s no greater tool than the full suite of programmatic channels.

Connected television (CTV) advertising has quickly become one of the most dynamic and competitive segments in digital advertising. As the medium matures, leaders in the space are emerging and beginning to consolidate, signaling a possible end to the “wild west” era of CTV advertising. In this week’s blog from Genius Monkey, join us as we take a close look at the biggest moves the CTV giants are making and what advertisers should know about them.

In a world where seemingly everything has to fit on a phone screen, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertisements stand out in a way that banner ads can’t. In fact, 91% of advertisers believe DOOH can deliver both upper- and lower-funnel metrics. DOOH ads are big, noticeable, and they’re getting better every day with improvements to audience reach and adaptability. Let’s take a closer look at the details and see what Genius Monkey users can expect from this growing channel.

One of the many draws of programmatic advertising is the promise of efficiency, but there are plenty of examples of businesses taking “efficiency” too far. In this week’s blog from Genius Monkey, we’re taking a look at another way some advertisers cut out too many steps with the issue of programmatic “black boxes.” Let’s dive in! What is a Programmatic Black Box? A black box is a system where advertisers spend ad money with little control as to how, when, and where ads are placed.

It’s been a couple years since Genius Monkey dove into the Flexibility of Modern Audio Ads, and it’s time to check in with programmatic’s most underrated medium. In the last two years, the audio industry has experienced explosive growth and consumers are eating up audio in all new ways. The audio advertising landscape is evolving, and it’s time for advertisers to keep up or get left behind. Let’s look at the current state of audio ads and see how advertisers can best embrace the channel.

Performance indicators are a vital tool in the digital marketing process, allowing advertisers to gauge the success of their advertising efforts through a variety of metrics. As consumer attention becomes more fragmented and ad blindness rises, traditional metrics such as CTR, impressions, or ad frequency are increasingly falling short of telling the whole story. Views, impressions, and clicks are important, but are often touted as the end-goal or evidence of ultimate advertising effectiveness.

It’s April, and that means it’s Brand Optimization Month! There’s always room for improvement and opportunities to grow your brand, even for the seasoned programmatic veteran. Whether your company is new to the Genius Monkey platform or looking to expand its services, here are some key principles that will help you make April a great month for brand growth! Make Split-Testing a Part of Your DNA Many advertisers look at split-testing as finding THE singular method for advertising to an audience, but that’s just not realistic; tastes and expectations are always changing, and individual members of any audience will react differently to different messaging.

The Genius Monkey platform is all about efficiency, but what happens when the “optimization” does more harm than good? Just as cutting out the DSP step leads to long-term loss, removing programmatic channels like display, audio, OTT, or video might cost less in the short-term, but weakens the overall advertising strategy and inevitably cuts into the bottom line. Programmatic ads work best when they work together, allowing the strengths of each medium to overcome the drawbacks of the others.