The automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory through software and real-time auctions, rather than through direct, manually negotiated deals between an advertiser and a publisher.
Why it matters
Programmatic advertising enables highly efficient, scaled ad buying across a huge number of websites and apps simultaneously, with targeting and bidding decisions made automatically in real time — but it also introduces less direct visibility into exactly where ads are being shown compared to a direct publisher relationship.
In a sentence
"Our programmatic display spend reaches a much wider set of sites than we could realistically manage with direct publisher deals."
Related terms
- Antonyms: Direct buy (an ad placement negotiated and purchased directly with a specific publisher, rather than through an automated auction).
- Often confused with: Retargeting (programmatic is a method of buying ad inventory broadly; retargeting is a specific targeting strategy that can be executed through programmatic buying, among other methods).