What is Programmatic advertising: Why it matters for your career

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital advertising tools using software and algorithms and real-time bidding rather than the manual nature of the previous method of negotiating ad purchases between the advertisers and the publishers.

Rather than ad sellers making a deal with a website or application at a fixed price, programmatic acts as a real-time auction: as a user opens a webpage or launches an app, they can auction ad positions within a few milliseconds, and algorithms determine which advert to display as part of targeting, user information, bidding model and campaign objectives.

Programmatic advertising is on a boom in recent market research. The future outlook of the global spend and growth in the 2023-25 estimates are positive and in India also the programmatic ad industry is estimated to increase at a high rate.

Due to this increase, programmatic ad buying and selling is becoming an important concept to learn in order to become a better marketer, data analyst, media buyer, ad-tech expert or any other person handling digital campaigns or data-driven marketing.

Who should learn Programmatic advertising and how it can boost your career

The programmatic advertising is particularly applicable when you are:

• An online marketer or a person who is intending to work in the marketing/advertising field and wishes to deal with advanced ad campaigns rather than just simple social / search advertisements.

• A data professional data analyst, business-intelligence specialist or ad-ops professional since programmatic is data-oriented and focused on targeting data, metrics and KPIs and real-time analytics.

• A freelancer or growth-hacker, especially when you deal with performance marketing or e-commerce, when somebody is capable of creating, executing and optimising programmatic campaigns that can have a direct effect on ROI.

• An undergraduate / career-switcher interested in joining the fast-growing ad-tech / digital-media sector, where demand is booming and domain expertise of ad-tech technology is a competitive advantage.

Since programmatic advertising utilises data, automation, real-time decision-making, and analytics, this method provides a distinctive data synergy to people who are data literate, which is the combination of technical and marketing abilities. Learning programmatic will increase their employability as it opens up entry-level opportunities such as Programmatic Media Buyer, Ad Ops Analyst, Digital Campaign Manager or even data-driven marketing strategist.

In other markets, particularly India where digital adoption is growing rapidly, brands and agencies are becoming more and more dependent on programmatic advertisement buying to target audiences, which is why the understanding of programmatic advertising is a useful, future-oriented career option.

What makes Programmatic advertising important today

• Scale & Reach Programmatic manages massive volumes of ad volume across websites, apps, streaming, video, DOOH, etc. Automation allows reaching a wide range of audiences at scale.

• Since the ad delivery is made based on user data, context and targeting parameters, a campaign can be carefully adjusted to the user groups, enhancing conversion rates, relevance, and efficiency.

• Overhead is minimised through real-time bidding and automation in contrast to manual ad buying and assists advertisers to optimise spend dynamically.

• Programmatic campaigns can offer detailed metrics and analytics (impressions, clicks, conversions, audience data) - data can be optimised in order to act on it, A/B test, bid/timing tactics.

• Programming across display advertisements, video, mobile, in-app, connected television, out-of-home online, etc. - enabling it to be versatile as the media consumption shifts.

According to one of the latest industry predictions, the programmatic advertising market worldwide is likely to expand, with the coming years, with the incorporation of AI, the rise of mobile ads, and the rise of consumption of digital media.

Where to learn Programmatic advertising: Best courses (free & paid)

To develop a programmatic-advertising-skillset, the following courses and learning paths, rated well by students, are some of the free masterclasses, more formal courses, and other courses that a beginner or a mid-career practitioner might consider:

• Programmatic Masterclass by StackAdapt Academy - a free and self-paced course (approx 2 hours) in the basics of programmatic advertising, targeting and targeting audiences, adtech ecosystem, attribution, measuring your campaigns, and trending channels such as CTV / DOOH. Very good beginning level with beginners or marketing experts.

• Introduction to Programmatic Advertising Strategies by Alison, a free online course that describes how programmatic buying of ads works, pricing and ad units and the algorithms behind bidder offers, and is appropriate to those new to ad-tech.

• University of Colorado Boulder Programmatic Advertising on Coursera, as part of a larger specialisation on performance marketing and digital advertising. It is user friendly, can be completed in approximately a week (approximately 10 hrs/week) and offers a certificate of achievement which can be shared (paid or audit/financial-aid). Fine to learn in a more in-depth way.

• Programmatic Advertising Course (India) by Adtechademy, is a more workplace-focused training (8-week format, DV360 training) designed to equip learners with a hands-on skillset and job-readiness; relevant in case you want to gain actual work experience and skills.

You can choose the one that suits you depending on what you need to be familiar with, in quick overview, certification or in-depth agency-style training.

How learning Programmatic advertising can boost your career 

With a background in data or analytics (statistics, Python/R, data analytics, business intelligence), you can become a very powerful hybrid with programmatic advertising skills: data + marketing + automation. This qualifies you in the following positions:

• Programmatic / Digital Media Buyer or Planner
  
  

• Ad Ops Analyst / Campaign Manager
  
  

• Growth Marketing Analyst / Performance Marketing Specialist
  
  

• Data-driven Marketing Strategist
  
  

Since programmatic ad buying requires a lot of data to work: user segmentation, bidding algorithms, performance metrics, attribution, conversion tracking another person with an analytical skill level can do well in streamlining campaigns, interpreting performance, increasing ROI, and leveraging the audience data.

Furthermore, with the trend of more companies (particularly, e-commerce, media, digital agencies) moving to programmatic advertisements all over the world and in India, there is an increased need to demand professionals knowledgeable in both marketing and data. What I mean is that programmatic advertising skills are not merely nice to have but may be a source of core differentiation in your profile.

Luckily, there are sufficient learning options available to you, including short and free masterclasses, as well as comprehensive courses to get you started without investing too much.