Best Programmatic Advertising Agency: Top 6 Choices for 2023
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Programmatic ads are one of the most efficient, cost-effective, customizable, and data-driven methods of buying paid media.
By 2023, it’s estimated that 91% of total digital ad spend will be on programmatic technology.
To get the most out of your programmatic ad spend, it’s wise to work with a programmatic advertising agency because of their immense experience in automated ad buying and selling.
We’ve curated this list of the top 6 programmatic ad agencies to make it easier for you to choose a reputable one. We’ll also share some tips on hiring the best agency to run effective ad campaigns for your business.
Let’s begin!
TABLE OF CONTENTS: ↓
Top 6 Programmatic Advertising Agencies
Here are the top 6 programmatic advertising agencies for 2023 and ahead.
1) Single Grain
Single Grain is a full-service digital marketing company that offers ROI-focused programmatic advertising services. They’ve been in business since 2014 and established themselves as a leading AdWords and PPC marketing company that has helped companies such as Amazon, Salesforce and Intuit scale their revenue.
Under the guidance of founder Eric Siu, the pay-per-click management team at Single Grain offers industry-leading skills and expertise to offer maximum ROI from your programmatic advertising campaigns.
As a Google Premier Partner, Single Grain has years of experience running successful Google Ads campaigns across nearly every industry.
Key Services:
- Planning and execution of paid search marketing strategy.
- In-depth research of the client’s industry competitors.
- Strategic search for relevant keywords with a focus on conversion.
- Creation and optimization of relevant ad campaigns and ad copies.
- Measurements of ROI and implementation of programmatic advertising optimization strategies.
- Regular tracking and monitoring of ongoing campaigns.
- Advanced campaign consultation, including geo-targeting and day-parting.
- Regular creation of campaign progress reports.
- Identification of relevant growth opportunities to acquire new buyers.
Single Grain specializes in:
- Intelligent bidding solutions to maximize the programmatic campaign ROI.
- Display and Search Ads to ensure scaled conversions with cost-effective CPCs.
- Dynamic Search Ad strategies to get the most out of the non-branded keywords.
- Their PPC specialists team performs regular A/B testing to optimize ad copies, images, and CTAs for better conversions.
- They follow an intelligent ad strategy based on your business goals.
- They perform Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) that connects with your CRM to track the quality of your online leads.
- They provide specific, insightful, and comprehensive reports comprising detailed progress of each of your KPIs.
Top Clients:
- Amazon
- Salesforce
- Uber
- Airbnb
- Intuit
- Bittrex
Pricing: They offer custom pricing plans as per your business goals and requirements.
Get My Free Programmatic Advertising Plan
2) Hubgen
Hubgen, founded in 2020, is a digital marketing agency based in the U.K. It was founded by Justin Elliott and Graham Taylor with the objective of delivering high-quality leads to businesses across multiple sectors.
Hubgen helps global brands of all sizes generate leads. In 2020, the agency worked with a £1.5 billion healthcare brand and took their lead generation activity to the next level, resulting in a 350% return on investment.
Key Services:
- Understanding business goals and objectives, then mapping out the best digital customer strategy and ad platforms.
- Setting up and running the new ad strategy.
- Analyzing the quality and conversion rates of the leads generated.
- Finding ways to optimize the sales funnel to reduce the cost per conversion.
Hubgen specializes in:
- Running localized ad campaigns to target relevant customers who are more likely to convert.
- Building a lead generation hub at the heart of your business to attract potential clients.
- They offer a competitive advantage by providing you with your own agile lead generation hub.
- They provide complete control on programmatic ad buying with full transparency to know the channels that receive the maximum or the lowest conversions.
Contact Details: hel[email protected], 01392241149
Pricing: Book a 30-minute call and, based on your goals and objectives, you will receive a price quote.
3) Lounge Lizard
Lounge Lizard is a leading online advertising agency that was launched in 1998, with offices in four different U.S. locations.
They have successfully helped several small- and large-scale companies achieve their business goals. Their client list includes many globally renowned companies, such as Canon, ESPN, and Nikon, establishing their efficiency and success rate in online advertising services.
Lounge Lizard has an experienced and trained PPC team that provides customized pay-per-click campaigns based on your campaign goals. They offer ROI-focused PPC services to increase your traffic, website conversions, and revenue faster and at a cost-effective price.
Key Services:
- Researching the best keywords based on individual campaign goals.
- Performing competitive analysis to enhance the advertising strategy.
- Advising intelligent bidding strategies to maximize conversions and reduce cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
- Running programmatic advertising campaigns on a variety of ad platforms.
- Leveraging remarketing campaigns to help your brand remain on top of your audience’s mind.
- Offering creative landing page design and exceptional copywriting tactics to convert clicks to sales.
- Offering conversion tracking to track the campaigns and ad copies leading to sales.
- Performing daily ad optimization to minimize ad spend wastage.
Lounge Lizard specializes in:
- They have one of the best landing page designing teams to create high-converting PPC landing pages with clear and consistent branding and a strong call to action.
- They have a team of skilled programmatic advertising professionals who perform in-depth market analysis and create ad copies leveraging exceptional copywriting skills to generate the highest levels of engagement.
- Lounge Lizard has extensive experience managing Google Search, Bing Search, Google Display, LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, and Google Shopping Feed Ads.
- They are a certified LinkedIn marketing partner to help your brand reach the most relevant prospects on LinkedIn.
Top Clients:
- Canon
- ESPN
- Nikon
- Reuters
- National Geographic
- The Walt Disney Company
Contact Details: (646) 661-7828
Pricing: They offer custom pricing plans as per your business goals and requirements.
Dive Deeper: How Remarketing Can Help Increase Conversions
4) Disruptive
Disruptive is a dedicated digital advertising agency with more than 1,000 positive reviews. They started in 2012 and now manage more than $250 million in digital advertising budgets annually.
In addition, they have earned more than 50 local and national awards, highlighting their excellence in paid media management services. Presently, they have a team of 50-249 employees to work on each campaign dedicatedly.
Key Services:
- Creating, managing, optimizing and analyzing Google Search Ads, Display Ads, Shopping Ads, Microsoft Ads, and other online ad platforms.
- Running retargeting campaigns based on target demographics.
- Researching and refining ongoing keywords for better ROI.
- Creating ongoing ad copy to improve the ad quality score, resulting in lower CPC and higher profits.
Disruptive specializes in:
- They use a strategic approach to generate and nurture the leads through the buying funnel for maximum conversions.
- They have a team of programmatic ad experts specializing in Google shopping and feed management to get you 18% higher revenue per click than text ads.
- Disruptive also specializes in Microsoft ads to catch over 63 million searchers who are not on Google.
- Retargeting is another expertise where they nurture your most qualified non-converted traffic by using a multi-platform approach.
Notable Clients:
- Adobe
- BPI Sports
- Horse & Rider
- Davinci
- NASM
- TruDog
Contact Details: (877) 956-7510
Pricing: Disruptive offers hourly or project-based pricing plans, ranging from $150-$199 per hour.
Dive Deeper: How to Create Compelling Text Ads on Google (with Examples)
5) AMP Agency
AMP Agency is a top-rated programmatic advertising agency with headquarters in Boston and over 300 clients nationwide.
This agency brings brands closer to their audience by designing better customer journeys and solving the most complex challenges that businesses face during the marketing process. They provide experience management across digital and physical, designing and operating cohesive brand experiences to grow businesses.
Key Services:
- Create a digital experience to drive engagement and amplify the company’s offerings.
- Develop a one-of-a-kind targeting approach for programmatic advertising based on unique business goals.
- Build ad campaigns that drive maximum revenue by leveraging programmatic media buying that combines proprietary data activation and targeting strategies.
AMP Agency specializes in:
- They analyze brand purchase data and pair it with their data in DMP (Data Management Platform) for maximum efficiency.
- AMP Agency uses next-gen programmatic media buying tools such as Forrester, MRI, and Nielsen to get a robust understanding of the brand’s target audience.
- They build buyer personas to secure new customers and build existing customers’ loyalty.
- AMP Agency creates ads to target customers in specific areas for a maximum engagement at a reduced price.
- For brands interested in building their own in-house DMP, they provide consulting and integration services.
Top Clients:
- Maybelline
- Garnier
- Virtue
- Vizio
- XBOX
- ASUS
Contact Details: (617) 837-8200
Pricing: AMP Agency quotes prices based on your goals and requirements.
Dive Deeper: The Ultimate Guide to Developing Buyer Personas (with Templates!)
6) Sparcmedia
Sparcmedia is a digital advertising company that was founded in 2009. They capitalize on the convergence of data, media, insights, and technology to revolutionize how brands connect with consumers.
Key Services:
- Provide audience insight to understand the interests and behavior of the audience.
- Map audience journey.
- Implement a cross-channel media buying strategy, including display, rich media, video, and dynamic creatives.
Sparcmedia specializes in:
- They build custom audience segments in a data management platform to reach psychographic-based consumer segments.
- They engage with audiences through targeted video, search and display ads across the web and social.
- Sparcmedia helps you uncover the online customer journey of your audiences using ad serving technology to optimize media strategies.
- They conduct pre and post-campaign surveys to measure the change in brand awareness and perception as a result of the campaign.
Top Clients:
- Bmbmedia
- Millmaine Entertainment
- McCANN Health
- Cook Islands
Contact Details: 61 2 9333 9700
Pricing: They offer custom pricing depending on your business requirements and goals.
Get My Free Programmatic Advertising Plan
What Is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the art of automated buying and selling of online advertising space by targeting specific audiences and demographics. The technology uses ML and AI algorithms on programmatic platforms equipped with online “bidding mechanisms.”
It is different from the traditional method of buying ads, which involves dealing with a salesperson for the price, placements, and number of impressions.
A programmatic advertising agency consists of specialized online marketing professionals who manage several programmatic display marketing ad platforms. These agencies help you effectively purchase digital media through display advertising and real-time bidding.
They combine data, technology and experience to create targeted campaigns to attract new audiences and drive revenue, as well as providing key takeaways from your campaign data that enable you to run more effective ad campaigns.
Why Should Businesses Use Programmatic Advertising?
Here are six reasons why businesses should use programmatic advertising.
Improved Efficiency
Through programmatic advertising, there is no delay in generating results. It is an automated process; it enables brands and agencies to purchase ad space on websites and apps within a few seconds, helping save time.
Higher Returns on Investment
Programmatic advertising helps create targeted ad campaigns on a smaller budget. It offers robust and specific targeting that translates to fewer wasted clicks and impressions.
Increased Reach
Since you can purchase digital ad space quickly through programmatic advertising, it enables you to reach your targeted audience by giving you access to an unlimited supply of ad inventory across millions of websites worldwide. It lets you reach the right users on the right devices and mediums.
Advanced Tracking Ability
Programmatic advertising offers advanced tracking features that let you see the number of conversions and the category and value of each conversion. This helps you identify the campaigns, mediums, devices, keywords, ad copies, landing pages, etc., that assist in maximum conversions.
Complete Transparency
Programmatic advertising provides increased transparency to marketers and advertisers compared to traditional advertising. It lets you know on which website and at what time your ad was placed. Moreover, it also helps you determine what percentage of your ad was seen.
Real-Time Management
In programmatic advertising, each ad impression is tracked and reported in real time. Thus, advertising agencies do not have to wait for an end-of-campaign report to check on performance. You can adjust bids and targets as required.
Dive Deeper: The Ultimate Guide to Programmatic Advertising for Brands in 2023
Why Do You Need a Programmatic Advertising Agency?
Here are the top three reasons why choosing a programmatic advertising agency is crucial for your business.
Experience
Programmatic advertising utilizes algorithms to get your ads in front of your audience. However, algorithms alone cannot give you the best results. You need a combination of algorithmic automation and human intelligence to drive the best ROI.
Programmatic ad agencies have expert PPC and paid media professionals who have several years of experience managing paid ad campaigns for different niches.
Performance Measurement
Programmatic ad agencies identify and target suitable prospects for your business via relevant searches. They use data from several ad platforms and leverage multiple tools to measure the performance metrics with a situation-specific approach, such as climate, geolocation, user intent, and user interests.
Ad Optimization
Programmatic ad agencies understand the tricks of effectively optimizing the ad campaigns for maximum lead generation. They have skilled advertising professionals who know the art of creating engaging ad copy and intent-focused landing pages to reduce the cost of advertisement and increase revenue.
Dive Deeper: How B2B Firms Can Acquire Leads with Programmatic Ads
How to Choose the Best Programmatic Advertising Company
Every digital marketing agency is not the same. Some might not have the required experience in your business niche, while others might be too costly for a start-up. You should always select a digital advertising agency based on your specific business goals.
Here are the top factors to consider before choosing a programmatic advertising agency.
1) Research the Agency
Research the agency and its background. Check how long their clients stay with them. A reasonable client retention rate is always a bonus.
Analyze customer testimonials to check the credibility of the agency. You can usually find them on the company’s website. Read the testimonials to understand how the agency helped its previous clients accomplish their business goals.
You can also look for case studies, reviews on sites like Clutch or G2, and ratings. Moreover, look for the industries they typically work with.
Before selecting any agency, you should be able to find ample evidence that an agency helped its clients succeed similar to the way you want to succeed.
2) Ask Questions
Set up a call with the agency to discuss your needs and ask them questions.
Use this opportunity to understand their work process and decide whether they have the required skills and knowledge to create the most effective campaign for your business.
Asking specific questions, such as the ones here, will help you gauge the effectiveness of the ad agency:
- How long have you been in business?
- Which ad platforms do you use?
- How do you measure conversions?
- What are the modes of communication?
- Will I get an account manager to whom I can reach out if there are any questions?
- Which industries have you worked with so far?
- What tools do you use to manage your ad campaigns?
- What is your typical work process?
- Do you outsource your work?
- What would be the reporting schedule?
- Is there a cancellation policy?
3) Understand the Payment Structure
Understanding the payment structure is vital before you hire an agency.
You should have a clear idea of how the agency will calculate the fees because there are agencies that charge an ad retainer or minimum guarantee each month.
Confirm the set-up fees and monthly account handling fees. Also, ask if they charge any success fee if certain milestones are achieved. Enquire about any hidden costs that the agency charges its clients for any extra services included in your package.
4) Check the Level of Transparency
Every digital advertising agency should give you easy-to-understand reports regarding where and how your campaigns are served. Ad fraud is rampant across digital ad buying platforms, so make sure to check the sample reports before committing.
The agency should provide transparent reporting using KPIs to measure your ad campaign performance. If an agency is not transparent and if you find any loopholes in the reporting structure, then it is better to find another programmatic agency.
Get My Free Programmatic Advertising Plan
How to Implement Programmatic Advertising
Implementing programmatic advertising is an art that experienced and savvy ad-media professionals are experts at.
Here are the top five ways to implement programmatic advertising.
1) Divide Your Target Audience into Micro Segments
The first step is dividing your audience into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, such as:
- Demographic: Includes age, race, gender, location and language.
- Behaviors: Includes job, purchasing behavior and search behavior.
- Interests: Consists of factors such as pursuits and fandom.
- Psychographics: Includes factors such as personality, values, opinions and lifestyle.
- Audience size: Can be large, small, broad or narrow.
Using programmatic advertising, you can target a very specific group of people and create highly relevant ads. However, you need to clearly understand who your target audience is.
Use tools such as Google Ads Customer Match and Facebook Lookalike Audiences to target customers who share similar characteristics as your previous customers.
2) Serve Ads Based on Your Target Audience’s Preferences
Create programmatic advertising to serve ads based on their audience buyer persona.
Advertising agencies can usually help you create a buyer persona and gather data on your prospects’ preferences. You can then serve ads to customers based on their choices to increase the chances of conversions.
Thus, with the help of programmatic advertising, you can reach your target audience with the right message at the right time.
3) Retarget People Who Have Shown Interest Earlier
Retargeting prospects is one of the best ways to generate more conversions, since retargeting audiences are 70% more likely to convert:
With the help of programmatic advertising, you can retarget customers who have visited your site and browsed some products or services. This way, you will reach them with targeted messaging, including the products or services they are most interested in.
You can even offer them a discount and other incentives to encourage them to buy the product.
Include pixels on your website to capture customer data and create a custom audience in your ad platform. It will help you to target those customers programmatically.
Dive Deeper: Retargeting 101: Why It’s Essential for Any Marketing Funnel
4) Run Programmatic Ads Based on Customer Journey
A clear understanding of your customer journey is crucial to identify the key touchpoints where programmatic ads will be most effective.
For example, if you are selling insurance policies, then your customer journey will look something like this:
- I need an insurance policy
- I research the type of insurance I want
- I compare different policies and premiums
- I decide which policy to buy
- I buy the policy
You should use programmatic ads to reach customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Advertising companies will help you map your customer journey and use it to create ad campaigns for every stage.
Dive Deeper: Tips for Creating a Data-Driven B2B Customer Journey Map
5) Include Videos in Your Programmatic Ads
Expenditure on programmatic video ads is likely to reach $74.8 billion by the end of 2023.
Since videos are more engaging than most other types of content, it is better to include videos in ads so you stand out from the competition.
Video ads and programmatic advertising go hand in hand as video ads can be dynamically inserted into ad space in real time, considering such factors as location, demographics, and browsing history of a viewer.
Types of Ads That Can Be Managed Programmatically
The following ads can be managed programmatically:
- Display Ads: These ads appear on the Google Display Network.
- Mobile Ads: These are the ads that appear on mobile devices (like smartphones and tablets).
- Video Ads: These ads run on YouTube and websites or apps running on the Google video partners program.
- Connected TV and OTT Ads: These ads are displayed on smart TVs and OTT devices during premium, ad-supported shows provided by top-tier networks.
- Native Ads: These are cohesive ads with the page’s content, assimilated into the design and consistent with the platform behavior.
- Digital Audio Ads: These ads are placed into digital audio content to reach listeners.
- Social Ads: These are ads designed and scheduled to maximize the social media advertising results to achieve campaign goals. These ads include sponsored ads, display ads, static, video, and interactive social media ads.
- Search Ads: These ads are displayed on the search engine results pages at either the top or the bottom of the page, depending on the ad quality score and bid.
- Geo-targeted Ads: These ads deliver content within a defined range of geographic boundaries to customers who meet specified parameters or criteria.
- Digital Out-of-Home Marketplaces or Programmatic Direct: Also known as programmatic DOOH, refers to the automatic buying, selling, and delivering ads on digital billboards and signage. DOOH is powered up with AdTech, such as geofencing, tracking, retargeting, personalizing, attribution, and measurement.
- Ad Retargeting and Dynamic Creative: These ads let you show ads to audiences who have previously visited or used your website or app.
Dive Deeper: Geotargeting: How to Find the Right Customers for Your Brand
How Much Does Programmatic Advertising Cost?
Programmatic ads are generally traded on a Cost Per Mille (CPM) basis, which means how much it costs to have an ad appear 1,000 times. Programmatic CPM ranges from $0.5 to $2 on average.
However, this amount is highly dependent on factors such as industry, device, format, and placement. Moreover, the quality of listings and targeting level also determine the price.
How much you invest in programmatic ads depends on your business goals and the time taken to achieve those goals.
Ready to Hire a Programmatic Advertising Agency?
Programmatic media buying agencies are experienced professionals who understand what it takes to build robust digital advertising campaigns to scale your business growth.
I have listed the top programmatic advertising companies you should consider for your next marketing campaign.
Make sure to examine the worth of the digital marketing company by conducting the checks discussed in this article before you partner with an agency.
Schedule your FREE consultation with Single Grain’s advertising experts to discuss your needs.👇
