Social media has become an incredibly popular and effective advertising tool because of its ability to connect brands to consumers throughout the shopping journey. Brands have been funneling ad dollars to Facebook, Snapchat and others to reach audiences, specifically those that skew to a younger demographic.

As advertising opportunities have increased across platforms such as social media, marketers have often been drawn to the latest “shiny object,” neglecting to focus on the proven ability of the old standby, programmatic advertising. 

In the image below, you can see some of the data showing a higher return-on-ad-spend for programmatic vs. Facebook/Instagram.

In recent months, everything we knew about advertising and online shopping has shifted and done so abruptly. Retailers specifically are seeing a decline in in-store sales and an increase in ecommerce shopping as pandemic safety measures continue to remain in place.

In addition, social platforms are having unprecedented disruption from both users and advertisers as the social climate continues to change with world events and Facebook continues to amend their data privacy policies.

Many marketers failed to account for unpredictability on social channels based on the nature of consumer use, resulting in  heavy fluctuations of reach and targeting. As behaviors are rapidly changing, the reliability of social media advertising is proving to be a bit tumultuous for brands. 

Many are choosing to pull their ad dollars from social, leaving them needing to reach users to drive sales and conversions in a different capacity.

They are seeking a strong vehicle for their message to reach consumers in the right place at the right time.

As we continue to carefully consult our clients through the abrupt changes in media consumption and shopping behaviors, we decided to test programmatic’s true audience capabilities with a multi-location retailer in June 2020.

During this time, most of the country continued to have limited in-person shopping outside of the necessities but were slowly adjusting to re-entering retail establishments.

We decided to compare programmatic display performance against Facebook campaigns. In doing so, we tracked the impact of creative and messaging throughout the funnel. We were then able to track both online and offline sales based on origin to accurately segregate and assign attribution throughout the process.

With precision targeting, massive scale and strategic optimization levers, programmatic proved to be a strong contender for driving leads, demonstrating the true magnitude of the platforms and its longstanding effectiveness. 

We worked with a longstanding advertising partner that is also a multi-location retailer who wanted to compare programmatic display performance against Facebook and Instagram to identify the best way to reach their audiences and maximize their return on ad spend (ROAS) mid-pandemic.

Programmatic campaigns used in this scenario were strictly display banner ads and were compared with Facebook and Instagram campaigns over a one week timeframe with a $60K investment between the two. The budget was split with 59% going to social and the remaining 41% being used toward display

Campaigns were aligned by funnel position over a one week timeframe. We replicated messaging on both social and programmatic campaigns across top or awareness campaigns, middle or data targeted and low funnel with retargeting campaigns.

We also  leveraged recency for ads to increase bid amounts for those users that were most  inclined to purchase when they were ready to take action.

We broke out the various eCPMs for each tactic across audience targeting and creative messaging for unique insights into comparative metrics. This data could then be used to refine the campaign approach to maximize performance. 

Top of the funnel ads resulted in a 75X return-on-ad-spend.

What we found was that despite high eCPMs for creatives that served for top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel social media campaigns, both generated nearly a 50x return, proving its value. However, the top of the funnel display creative resulted in a 75x return on spend. Based on our findings, display performance speaks to the importance of the right combination using targeting, messaging, and total impressions served. 

Attribution was especially important in our scenario. Online purchases account for the majority of sales but tracking offline sales was also a strong indicator of campaign success.

Many retailers are ramping up their marketing efforts for in-store purchases as they anticipate more traffic with stay-at-home orders beginning to ease. We chose to track sales with a multi-touch attribution model that included a 7-day time decay. This allowed us to bid more aggressively on those with the most recent interest and adjust the bidding as time passed and interest dwindled.

Over the course of the week, conversions that happened closer to when the user received an ad got a larger percentage of credit. We implemented this for both programmatic and social campaigns for an equal comparison and eliminating the chance of duplication. Every ad was assured to receive proper credit for its contribution and would also compete against all other competing media for the most holistic review of success. 

Programmatic still works and has a powerful impact on the market but all programmatic is not created equal.

Great results require attention to detail when it comes to campaign set up, audience targeting and optimization techniques. Much of the success was reliant on the brand being able to not only identify their audience but getting the right message to the right user at the right time…for the right price. The correct combination lets advertisers take advantage of the massive scale and reach to ensure ad dollars are being spent effectively and efficiently.

About the Author: Brian Kroll is Regional VP of Sales for Adtaxi and also runs the Strategic Accounts team. A member of 4 different IAB marketing committees, Brian developed Adtaxi’s Magellan “Performance Based RTB & Social” campaign optimization algorithm and is passionate about digital marketing