Over the past few years, programmatic technology has turned the advertising world on its head. Algorithms have taken over the buying work, freeing consultants to provide strategic expertise, while studies have shown that more and more companies are taking advertising into their own hands rather than outsourcing to agencies.
How whitelists contribute to effective campaigns
This was a positive shift all around, but one that initially raised questions about brand safety – one of the reasons the use of whitelists has become standard practice. Programmatic’s ultimate goal is to ensure that the right buyers see the right ads – but as a company, you don’t want your products showcased on websites that go against your values or your brand voice, even if they supposedly cater to your target audience. Put simply, a whitelist is a list of websites and apps that are added to a media campaign and ensures that impressions are served only to the designated sites. In other words, whitelists enable you to specify exactly which sites you would like your products to end up on. When implemented correctly, they enable you to control your content flow and ensure that your products and services are reaching the right customers.
Optimizing your whitelist to boost performance
So what’s the best way to create whitelists that deliver optimal results? Many people working with DSPs for the first time are under the impression that once you’ve set up your campaign, you can sit back and let the algorithms work their magic. Not so fast. For optimal results, it’s a good idea to wait a week or so (or until around 10 to 20% of the campaign is delivered) and then evaluate any necessary changes to be made to your whitelist. By extracting your campaign data, you can identify the top performers among your whitelisted domains and pick out their common characteristics. Are your ads performing better on blogs rather than news sites? Are the clicks rolling in from sports content, while more family-oriented readers chose to take their dollars elsewhere? It’s likely that your campaign data will confirm things you already suspected, but there will undoubtedly be some surprising new insights in there as well.
Whitelists are just one part of building an effective ad buying strategy, but an important one. The way you build, implement and optimize your whitelist will play an important role not only in safeguarding your brand identity but also in ensuring that your products and services reach the people they need to. Want to know how DiaqAI can help you build effective ad campaigns? Get in touch now.
