What is RTB Marketing and what can it do for your business?

RTB marketing or Real Time Bidding is a method of buying advertising through the internet. It works by bidding for advertising space. In other words, online advertising auctions are carried out in real time with the aim of finding potential customers. It consists of buying and selling ad impressions. It is a new trend in digital marketing that uses user data in order to find the right placement for each ad. It has various applications for inbound marketing. One of its main advantages is the speed with which the transactions are carried out. If the advertiser manages to win the auction, its advertising is displayed on the website instantly.

When a user enters a website, the advertiser's digital marketplace receives a request for a bid based on their data. This can be location, navigation or demographic data. By analysing this data, an advertising exchange takes place between the advertisers who display their ads in real time and the internet users. In other words, when a user enters a website, the advertisements of the companies that have bid the highest appear first. This guarantees an effective and efficient sale.

Benefits of RTB marketing

• Increased revenue: By incorporating Real Time Bidding into your business you will be entering a market that is geared towards maximising the value of each product. Through advertising, you will be guaranteed qualified traffic which, in turn, will not waste any sales opportunities.

• Investment savings: Due to the RTB advertising methodology, advertisers will only pay for the impressions they are interested in, i.e. depending on their target audience, they will bid for their ad to appear. This will lead to savings in investments with no future.

• Segmentation: In order for an advertisement to have an impact on the audience, it is necessary to segment the audience, which will allow optimising the content of the message by personalising it for each client through language, style, offer or tone.

• Better results: When marketing agencies optimise advertising campaigns, they achieve better results. In other words, there is an increase in the performance of marketing actions. If the model is exploited to the maximum, interesting results can be achieved.

are RTB marketing and programmatic buying the same thing?

It is common to confuse RTB with programmatic buying, as they are based on the same principle: media buying. However, their differences are notable. Firstly, it should be noted that programmatic buying is known as the system in which buyers and sellers carry out an automated buying and selling action in real time. Therefore, RTB is a subtype of programmatic buying as it involves an automation process, but focuses on the open auction model. Programmatic buying includes not only RTB or Open Exchange, but also guaranteed programmatic buying, preferential access or private auctions.

Elements involved in RTB marketing

• Supply-side platforms: Supply-side platforms (SSPs) are specialised supply-side platforms used by publishers to select advertising space and offer it to advertisers. Some of the most famous are OpenX, Index Exchange or Rubicon. The differences between them lie in the user experience, connection and reporting options, private agreements or different formats.

• Demand sideplatforms: DSPs or demand side platforms are used by advertisers to automate the purchase of display advertising. They configure the elements of the campaign to set the participation in the bids that suit their marketing strategy. In turn, they can analyse the performance of their ads. Platforms such as DoubleClick or Turn stand out.

• Users: They are the core of any RTB marketing campaign. For these to be successful, they must correctly select the user profile to target the offer.

• Ad exchanges: These are essential platforms for RTB marketing. Through them, advertisers and publishers exchange the spaces offered by SSPs and bid requests from DSPs. They are pooled to carry out auctions and publications. Platforms such as ExoClick or PopAds can be used.

  

how does RTB marketing work?

1. The user enters a website and their information is collected in the form of cookies creating a visitor profile.

2. The profile is then analysed and advertisers are alerted with an offer and may or may not be interested in this profile depending on their target and the marketing strategy they are using.

3. When advertisers decide to give a value to the offer, they bid for one of the advertising options. The most common types are:

• Banner: A banner is inserted into the web page and can include images, text or interactive elements.

• Floating advertising format: This type is also known as a layer, which is an advertisement that appears in the main window floating above the content of the web page.

• Unique advertiser: The brand will be associated with the unique advertiser. This will ensure trust in the advertising company and a number of benefits.

4. After bidding for the advertisement, the ad goes out to DSP. Immediately, publishers receive the bid and choose the one they are most interested in.

5. When the winner is chosen, their ad appears on the website automatically and they receive their profit.

4 keys to setting up RTB marketing in your business

• Identify objectives: In order to properly develop your RTB strategy, it is important to define objectives and KPIs, usually focused on generating an increase in sales and leads, increasing customer lifetime or decreasing the cost of investment.

• Implement metrics: To know the efficiency of your advertising marketing strategy you must know the volume of traffic to your website, conversion data and your database.

• Define your audience: After knowing your buyer persona, you should segment your audience into smaller groups, develop a sales funnel and create attractive ads for users.

• Link your campaign: Your marketing actions should be cohesive, i.e. the RTB campaign should go hand in hand with the user's buying stages, so that the ad will be delivered through the right channel at the right time.

5 applications of RTB in digital marketing

• Thematic campaigns: Depending on the theme of the website, it is possible to publish some ads or others, i.e. if the company is an advertiser of organic food, the banners can be published on sites related to health and wellness.

• Teaser campaigns: This type of campaign is characterised by generating curiosity about the product and revealing it later. This is known as a follow up campaign. Through programmatic buying, it is possible to receive information about the users that have been captured in the first stage. In this way, the message can be segmented and launched correctly.

• Audience campaigns: These are carried out through the purchase of data from third parties. This method makes it possible to reach users with certain behaviours.

• Remarketing campaigns: They are created to reach users who have previously contacted the brand, in other words, they try to recover the attention of people who have visited the website or have left a purchase unfinished.

• Lead campaigns: These are campaigns that focus on prospects and are used to discover which segment of users can be converted into sales qualified customers(SQL).