3 Ways Associations Can Benefit from Programmatic Advertising
How well do you know your digital audience? More importantly, is your association using the data you already have about your member and website visitors to provide a better online experience while earning more non-dues revenue?
Programmatic advertising uses specialized technology to collect data about your site’s users’ characteristics. This group data is used to facilitate the automated buying and selling of display ads through a dedicated ad network The more you know about your website visitors, the more relevant advertising you can host on your website, publication site or online career center, and the more value your advertisers will receive in return for their investment in your website audience.
Programmatic advertising has been a staple in the B2C space for many years, and B2B is quickly catching up. In 2018, almost 90 percent of B2B marketers are purchasing a portion of their online advertising programmatically.
How can programmatic advertising benefit your association?
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Programmatic advertising can improve your member engagement.
When you know the demographics of your site audiences – their age ranges, their gender, their business interests – you can ensure that the ads they see when they browse your sites (and, through retargeting, on other sites after they leave your online properties) are for products and services in which they are most likely to be interested. Although it’s sometimes considered intrusive, advertising is nonetheless a form of information. When this information seamlessly matches up with your website visitors’ information needs, programmatic advertising becomes less of a necessary nuisance and more of a welcome, complementary addition to your site.
Programmatic retargeting campaigns can also be very beneficial for your association marketing initiatives. These campaigns allow associations to market to site visitors (members, non-members, or other groupings of your choice) with distinct messages about membership benefits and events, turning programmatic advertising into a membership engagement and growth tool.
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Programmatic advertising can improve the value your association offers advertisers.
Participating in a programmatic advertising network means your association offers verifiable visitor data for advertisers to consider as they prepare their ad buy. Once they know more about your digital audience advertisers can craft messages, images and offers to a very specific segment of your audience, those and only those they want to reach with that campaign message. The potential for a return on their investment is much greater when advertisers have the ability to run these highly targeted campaigns.
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Programmatic advertising can increase the non-dues revenue your association earns from website advertising.
Association website advertising is in high demand because of the potential to reach highly motivated, educated and influential professionals within a given industry. Association members are often decision-makers who control high-value budgets on behalf of their company. They are a demographic suppliers and sponsors want to reach.
Whether plugging your on-site ad inventory to a programmatic ad network or selling retargeting campaigns serving ads to your audience after they leave your site, programmatic advertising offers the opportunity to maximize non-dues revenue from online advertising, monetizing every single impression you command on your sites and increasing the value of each impression by extending your audience around the web.
What could your association do with the non-dues revenue you earn from programmatic advertising? Enhance a member education and certification program? Fund scholarships that attract fresh talent to your industry? Bring on in-demand speakers for your next event? Programmatic advertising can fund those goals and more.
Associations interested in providing a richer information experience for members and potential members should give programmatic advertising a close look. It has the potential to improve online member engagement, attract new advertisers and earn your association more non-dues revenue.
