Programmatic display advertising is increasingly critical to digital marketing strategy, but it can be hard to set performance expectations. Most advertisers understand that other programmatic ad styles—like Connected TV or streaming audio ads—sit closer to the top of the funnel and need to be measured through downstream metrics.
Display ads, however, can be tricky. Because they appear online and are clickable, brands often expect that there will be direct returns (leads, purchases, etc.) comparable to what they see from their Google or Meta Ads. If they don’t see those, many advertisers will declare that their programmatic display campaigns “aren’t working” and will opt to turn them off.
The key to running successful programmatic display campaigns is to first understand what results to expect, what results not to expect, and how to best measure success.
Why Programmatic Display?
Programmatic display is the automated buying of display ad inventory across the open web, where ads are purchased in real time based on the value of each individual impression. Unlike the Google Display Network, which limits advertisers to inventory within Google’s owned and partner properties, programmatic display operates across the broader open web through multiple exchanges and publishers.
Instead of committing to fixed placements, brands use platforms that evaluate signals like context, audience behavior, and prior engagement to decide when and where ads appear. This gives brands more flexibility in inventory access, audience layering, and measurement, rather than relying on a single platform’s ecosystem and optimization logic.
Setting the Right Expectations
In ADM’s experience, skeptical clients will often assume that, because programmatic display ads are clickable, people are going to click on them at roughly the same rate that they would something like an Instagram ad. But that’s a misconception: it’s uncommon to see the same click-through rates and conversion rates that we see from other platforms with clickable media.
What brands should really be expecting are lifts throughout their other tactics like paid and organic search, as well as increases in retargeting audience sizes. This is why it’s important to assess performance through the right attribution models—chiefly, view-through attribution, which measures whether or not a user converts within a defined window after registering an ad impression.
Those conversions can come from any channel, not just a direct click on the ad itself, meaning success is often detected through lifts in Google and Meta Ads performance. Sometimes, brands will turn off a successful programmatic display campaign simply because they aren’t looking at the right numbers—and then will be surprised to see their other marketing channels suffer for seemingly-unexplained reasons.
Programmatic Display Pitfalls
Alright, so you’ve gotten your view-through attribution set up and it turns out your programmatic display campaigns aren’t providing adequate lift for your other paid media campaigns. That can be for any number of reasons.
Misaligned Creative
Creative choices frequently contribute to poor programmatic display performance. Sometimes, the role of the channel doesn’t get the specificity it deserves: brands will reuse social assets or other static creative that doesn’t exactly fit the purpose of programmatic advertising.
In reality, display creative has a very specific job. Unlike a lot of paid social creative, programmatic ads usually aren’t designed to generate instant conversions. They’re there to register quickly, reinforce brand recognition, and support downstream performance. When creative is too dense, sales-oriented, or poorly-branded, it doesn’t meaningfully influence recall or behavior.
Strong display creative tends to be simple and brand-forward. You want your audience to see it, register it, and remember it. If your programmatic display ads aren’t making any noticeable impact on your paid and organic search performance, it might be worth taking a hard look at your creative.
Inadequate Timelines and Windows
Programmatic display can also look ineffective when it isn’t given enough scale or time to register impact. Short flight windows, limited budgets, and tight frequency caps can hinder the creative’s ability to do its job. For instance, since part of the mission is to increase brand recall, limiting the number of times a user can see your ad is a huge disservice. If impact is minimal, consider adjusting frequency and letting flights run for longer—at ADM, we recommend testing for no fewer than three months.
Constraints become an issue in how you assess the data as well. If you’re looking at performance with a short lookback window, you’re likely missing the influence of older programmatic efforts entirely. Programmatic display is a nuanced channel, and sometimes you need to look at it from a few different angles to find its true impact.
Focusing Placements Too Narrowly
A narrow vision can limit your programmatic display campaigns. Brands often think they know their ideal audience and end up focusing too specifically. A preppy apparel brand might decide they’re showing ads on Investing.com, because visitors to that site could be a key audience. While that may be true, the beauty of programmatic and its targeting abilities is the opportunity to find new audiences that you may have never thought of before.
Through methods like interest targeting or third party audience utilization, it’s easier to reach that ideal customer wherever they are—maybe it is an investment-focused website, but it could just as well be a recipe site that the same users reference when they’re preparing dinner. Oftentimes, brands forget that their audience are full of people just like us, who have a wide range of interests outside of the narrow parameters that define a marketing audience or customer profile.
Patience and Expectations Matter
For most brands and audiences, there’s a way to run programmatic advertising that will have a real impact. But because it’s a channel that doesn’t often hit you over the head with instant conversions, success relies on purposeful design and appropriate expectations.
The channel’s real value shows up in assisted outcomes, like stronger branded search signals, healthier retargeting, or improved efficiency in paid social and search. These often won’t come overnight, however, and as a result many brands give up on good opportunities prematurely.
If you’re questioning whether programmatic display is actually contributing to performance, the ADM team can help assess attribution, creative, and channel role to determine whether the issue is execution, expectations, or a combination of both. Don’t hesitate to reach out to our team with questions.
