Display networks and programmatic advertising diverge in how they reshape the subtle mechanics of B2B advertising. Decode the tidbits.

The digital advertising landscape doesn’t center itself on the traditional belief that ads must be pushed toward audiences. It’s more about reaching the right audience at the right time.

And connecting with them, i.e., building a relationship.

It’s why the broader marketing and advertising industries have revamped their tactics.

Without strategies that align with the current market conditions, it’s likely your brand could fall into the noise.

But to thrive? That’s a whole different ball game.

To gain a competitive edge, businesses are turning towards advanced tech to meet their target audiences where they are, integrating the tech into their core strategies.

Among a plethora of such strategies enriched by the tech, display network advertising and programmatic advertising are two of the most widely effective ones.

They work towards the same goal and the very essence of digital advertising: reach and influence their target audience. But these two strategies are not interchangeable.

Each serve a different function and there are inherent distinctions.

Understanding these is a means of developing a strong foundational framework for their digital marketing efforts. And getting a step closer to meeting broader objectives.

Both these techniques focus on display ads across the available websites and platforms, but they aren’t even remotely the same. The differences between Display Network Advertising and Programmatic Advertising aren’t based on mere technicalities.

The key components to factor in are precision, scale, and efficiency – how does each method empower advertisers to make data-driven decisions?

Display Network ads attribute more control over where and how your message appears, which works wonders in elevating brand awareness and visibility.

But programmatic flips the conversation. It’s an automated and algorithmic approach that allows you to buy ads in real-time and personalize them. The latter has proven to be more sophisticated.

But the conversation isn’t about choosing one over the other. It’s about gauging which advertising method can tap into the power of data while clutching your brand narrative.

Understanding which strategy can perform better for your business goals can offer you a comprehensive insight into how to amalgamate the two and maximize impact across multiple touchpoints.

We now highlight what each of these advertising strategies truly entails.

Adobe illustrates programmatic advertising (or marketing) as the modern front of the advertising landscape. It is “the software automation of buying and selling digital ad space.”

This AI-driven approach to bidding on ad spaces is so popular that over 40% of the overall media budget and 90% of the digital ad budget is ascribed to programmatic advertising.

Manually bidding on ad spaces is taxing and repetitive. And in the AI-first landscape, this job has been passed on to tech. Marketers no longer take on the burden of such mundane tasks.

It’s AI that collates data points, connecting marketers and publishers.

Overall, programmatic advertising may seem complex on the surface, but it’s actually all about intuitively leveraging data and automation.

The Workings of Programmatic Advertising

1. Outline the answers to:

• Which audience segment are you trying to reach?
• What are your campaign goals?
• Across which channels are we trying to reach our target audience?

Your Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is your command center. This is where you input your targeting parameters, bidding strategy, and ad budget.

2. Now that you’ve input all the parameters into the DSP. It’ll be your own media buying dashboard. Here:

• You upload your creative assets, from banner ads to native ads.
• To improve the impact, ensure you hyper-personalize your targeting rules. Set the relevant location, device, time, behavioral or contextual variables, and focus on retargeting segments.
• Select the appropriate inventory type from open exchanges to private deals and direct placements.
• And finally, select the bid type between manual and dynamic.

This is quite a media-buying checklist. It ascertains that a well-thought-out strategy supports the actual buying process. It’s not you who is choosing individual websites for ad placement.

It’s your DSP that’s finding the best impressions for each user, i.e., it bids on impressions where the user is present at the exact moment.

Whether it’s during a travel vlog at 5 pm or during a mobile game at 10 pm, the ad will be shown to the same relevant user. That’s who actually matters.

Programmatic sifts through tons of user data to reach the right user, not just showcase the right ad.

3. Once the campaign goes live, the DSP bids on ad inventory across several websites and apps in real-time. It optimizes the selection process based on:

• Which placement gets the maximum conversions?
• Which audiences are engaging with that space?
• Which creative is performing the best?

You gain granular control through your DSP. You don’t need to manage anything manually; it’s automation that helps you scale performance.

You gather insights into what’s working for you and what could work better (like banner ads over videos). This feedback loop shifts programmatic advertising from being just a channel to a strategic testing engine.

There’s no guesswork, and you spend smarter.

Programmatic advertising has become an indispensable tool for marketing owing to its intelligent capabilities. And its overall spending is globally set to reach $800 billion by 2028.

As technology permeates every aspect of our lives, you can ascertain that your ads reach the audience through every channel possible.

Programmatic advertising is the most effective way to ascertain this.

For a more comprehensive understanding of why programmatic advertising has come to take center stage in digital marketing today, head to our piece here.

Just like Display Network Advertising, programmatic advertising serves display ads across different platforms. Often conflated with each other, they overlap in function.

Display network advertising is the process of placing visual ads, such as banners, video, and rich media, across websites and properties that have opted to showcase the ad in exchange for revenue.

These display ads are on a specific ad network where brands bid on ad placements. The precedence is given to the targeting criteria, such as demographics, behavior, interests, and patterns.

Like programmatic advertising, this is also heavily automated.

One of its most prominent examples is GDN, or the Google Display Network, with a reach of over 90% of Internet users and 3 million websites and apps.

In other words, display network advertising is an ad delivery system. Here, advertisers can access inventory (different ad placements) through a centralized platform.

Imagine there’s a publisher, but you aren’t directly negotiating with the New York Times. You’re laying it all out in front of the platform (maybe Google):

• The user you’re targeting
• Which creative do you wish to use
• What is your budget

It’s an entire ecosystem governed not by a single platform or ad format but by:

• Ad platform (Google)
• Ad server (tracks the ad)
• Publisher (hosts the ad space)
• And the user (whose behavior defines what is shown to them).

Display Network Advertising leverages audience-based targeting to the very last nub. It’s not just the web content but the behavior that defines which ad a user sees.

For example, if you start looking for how much the iPhone 11 costs, you’ll notice Apple ads across unrelated platforms.

Display Network Advertising is about buying access to audiences, not merely the space.

It’s all filtered by technical probabilities, intent, context, and performance. You may wonder why this is necessary at all.

But to dive deep, we must understand how this advertising approach operates.

What’s the Technical Flow of Display Network Advertising?

1. The publishers sign up with platforms, such as Google AdSense, to monetize their traffic. This allows them to decide:

• The ad size they’ll allow
• Where will the ads appear
• The kind of content that’s acceptable

The available ad spaces on the publisher’s platforms are known as the inventory.

2. Advertisers start building a campaign.

• Choose the appropriate campaign goal between web traffic, conversion, or awareness.
• Select the relevant contextual, demographic, audience (in-market and affinity), remarketing, and other targeting parameters.
• Upload creatives or use responsive formats.
• Set bids and the overall campaign budget.

3. Once the ad campaign is live, there’s a trigger when a user lands on the page that’s part of the network. This is technically a matchmaking process.

Google checks to see whether the user meets the advertiser’s targeting criteria. If multiple advertisers qualify, the network holds an internal auction that decides whose ad is shown.

The final decision is based on the bid, quality, and expected impact.

This process is a rule-based matching system, where the winning ad is selected from the server controlled within the network.

4. The winning ad is rendered and tacked based on the device, layout, and platform.

After this, ad impressions are counted – clicks and post-click behavior, such as conversions, bounce rates, and time-on-site, through tools like Google Tag Manager and conversion pixels.

5. As the ad campaign continues to run, the platform’s ML models start to auto-optimize, i.e., adjusting bids and placements and leaning down the target audience.

Additionally, responsive ad formats automatically adjust size and layout to improve ad performance.

And the budget is gradually reallocated towards higher-performing audiences and placements.

Display Network Advertising facilitates creative modularity, especially GNS. Advertisers can supply multiple headlines, images, creatives, and descriptions – Google tests them and amalgamates a combination that proves efficient.

What Google does here is test ad variants and recombine them for improved performance.

We have spotlighted the nitty-gritty of both advertising approaches – programmatic and display network, especially how they operate.

It’s now time to hop on to the differences between the two.

Programmatic and display network advertising both leverage advanced analytics and software to underscore the best and most strategic ad placements.

Albeit their differences, the two advertising approaches are two sides of the same coin. But programmatic is a bit more complex in its functioning than display network advertising.

Let’s pan out the fundamental nuggets.

1. Transparency

The very first is transparency.

It’s not just an operational concern but a strategic imperative in B2B advertising. There are narrower budgets, longer sales cycles, and high-value buying committees involved.

In display networks’ closed ecosystem, advertisers only communicate the data that the network wishes to, be it clicks, impressions, or basic placement details. The advertiser’s purview is limited – they don’t really get to see where their ads are being run, i.e., no idea of which content the ad is being shown next to or on which page.

So, you’re targeting based on interests and affinities, data that’s inferred and not always reliable.

Programmatic advertising affords a much higher level of transparency. Where did each impression come from, or where different data layers are leveraged in targeting, every significant aspect is accessible to advertisers.

This way, you can control that your ads are run only in appropriate environments. To ensure this, tools such as MOAT (by Oracle) and DoubleVerify offer an in-depth purview into blacklists and custom inventory.

And you receive insight into who viewed your ad, not just firmographic data, but also behavioral. Overall, it allows a comprehensive view of what’s really moving the needle.

2. Scale and Reach

Display Network operates within its own closed ecosystem. Google’s network is broad but relatively siloed. And it’s limited to the properties it owns and those it has partnered with.

But programmatic isn’t bound by a siloed network. It can tap into multiple ad exchanges and supply-side platforms, reaching a broader audience, from private marketplaces to premium publishers. They cover a wider inventory with a plethora of ad formats across different devices, including display, video, native, audio, and connected TV, among others.

Owing to this, programmatic expands the advertiser’s reach, seen across more platforms than in display network advertising.

3. Precision Targeting

Both advertising strategies facilitate remarketing and custom audience options; they are equally advanced in audience targeting.

Display network advertising leverages a targeting approach that is enough for use cases. However, it is less proactive in optimizing and tweaking its methods.

Meanwhile, programmatic advertising employs more granular and dynamic targeting. You have the ability to leverage third-party data, CRM, or DMP data and apply behavioral, contextual, or predictive modeling to it.

Unlike display network advertising, you aren’t targeting based on predefined segments but through real-time insights and performance metrics.

4. Control over Customization

In display network advertising, you’re working under the control of the ad network’s structure. You receive a moderate level of control to execute targeted campaigns effectively. This is why this form of advertising works wonders for small advertisers who don’t require heavy customization.

Programmatic advertising offers advertisers control over every tidbit, like tailoring aspects of their ad, from creative rotations and frequency caps to bid modifiers.

Additionally, programmatic advertising allows DCO or dynamic creative optimization, i.e., the ad content changes in real-time depending on the viewer.

Across the B2B landscape, every intricate difference matters. You’re selling to high-stakes audiences where wasting impressions on irrelevant audiences could damage your ROI.

With greater transparency, you can justify the spending to the stakeholders and fine-tune targeting. These aspects are fundamental contributors to your sales pipeline.

So, if a channel isn’t moving your brand’s bottom-line growth, it’s just dead weight.