Today in programmatic, there are seven main channels that are a major part of the conversation. You have your traditional channels like Native, Display, and Video. And you have your emerging channels like Connected TV, Audio, In-Game, and Digital Out-of-Home.

Let’s look at what these channels are and why someone might want to use them in an ad campaign. First, we have Native. The native format has evolved from an industry buzzword to a new standard for effectively communicating brand messages online.

It’s employed by many of the world’s largest brands and agencies.

• Native offers advertisers a way to present an ad that fits seamlessly into the user’s content consumption experience. Because of this, native ads match the look and feel of a webpage or app. Think of it like a chameleon. It blends in and has a non-intrusive nature that users are familiar with. This format has a strong emphasis on creativity and ad copy, which makes it a very engaging format. In general, Native is the best vehicle for distributing content, and you can effectively use it to educate or feature your brand or product comparisons. Next up, we have the most familiar programmatic format, Display. Since 1994, display ads have existed across the internet in one form or another.
• Display advertising refers to the process of advertising a product or service through visuals like images and videos on a network of publisher websites in the form of banner, image, or text ads. Now, let’s talk about Video. Video is a marketing strategy that involves creating a short, informative video that promotes a product or service. It can be incredibly effective for building brand awareness and affinity with your customer base.
• Video ads offer access to inventory that can be viewed across all devices—from desktop and mobile to Connected TV, which we’ll discuss later. You can use video formats to increase brand perception and to illustrate how your ideal audience might interact with and use your brand or product, all while strategically building and collecting an audience you can retarget with another format.
• Now, on to the emerging channels. First, let’s talk about Connected TV (CTV). With video being a popular and constantly evolving format, users are looking for new devices to consume content. And because connected TVs have become increasingly popular, viewership has grown tremendously across all demographic groups, with people enjoying the luxury of watching their favorite TV shows and videos whenever they want on a CTV device. CTV is a powerful tool that allows advertisers to tell a story in an entertaining way while connecting with users emotionally.
• Next, let’s talk about programmatic audio. As it turns out, radio isn’t dead; it has just migrated to digital devices. Many users are now fully immersed in listening experiences on a variety of platforms. To align with this trend, audio is a unique format that doesn’t focus heavily on visuals but instead speaks to the desire for audio content. Audio ads can relay their message directly to their audience and align with their listening experience across devices.
• No matter your marketing objective, you can introduce your brand to audiences who are actively engaged and provide hyper-personalized audio messages to your target audience. Next, let’s talk about in-game advertising. In-game advertising is the use of programmatic technology to serve non-clickable ads that match the look and feel of the online gaming environment. For example, ads in this channel can take the form of billboards, walls, jerseys, and more. And because this strategy increases realism while respecting the players and the game, with a high viewability rate, in-game is quickly becoming a favorable format for programmatic advertisers. Finally, we have Digital Out-of-Home, or DOOH.
• Digital Out-of-Home is defined as any digital advertising found outside the home, in a public environment. This could be a digital billboard or a bus stop ad, for example. Compared to traditional, static DOOH advertising, Digital Out-of-Home can help you present real-time messages, change creatives on the fly, and most importantly, measure the success of your ads.

This brings us to the end of our first module, The State of Programmatic. In this module, we first defined programmatic advertising as the systematic buying and selling of digital ad space. Then, we discussed the history of programmatic advertising, showcased through the evolving relationship between advertisers and publishers and the real-time buying process.

Finally, we went through all the sections of the programmatic ecosystem, covering the key players, such as ad networks, DSPs, and SSPs. Next up, let’s take a short quiz to test your knowledge before we move on to the next section of the course.