The power of automation for digital ads

September 29, 2023

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Digital advertising has come a long way in just the past few years. For the first time, digital ad spending exceeded traditional ads in 2023. Automation for digital ads now lets you set up ad campaigns that practically run themselves. This saves a ton of time and effort while also improving performance.

With automation, your ads can:

  • Automatically adjust bids to get more clicks and conversions within your budget
  • Test many different ads quickly to see what works best
  • Show the right ads to the right people at the right time
  • Coordinate ads across channels like Facebook and Google
  • Gain insights to constantly improve your campaigns

And more! Automation brings huge advantages to managing digital ads. In this post, we’ll explore how.

Automation for digital ads

Why automation improves your ads

First, what exactly is automation for digital ads? It simply means using technology to automate repetitive ad management tasks. This frees you up to focus on strategy and creativity, or if you aren’t a marketer – it simply allows you to get back to doing what you do best. Here are some of the key benefits automation for digital ads brings:

1. Faster Optimization
Automation lets you test many different ad variations quickly. You instantly see which ads and targets perform best. Winning ads then get more budget automatically. Poor performers get removed or replaced. This constant optimization ensures your spend keeps going toward what works.

2. More Personalized Targeting 
Automation for digital ads also makes it easy to create and target hundreds or even thousands of micro-audiences. You can tailor ads precisely for each group. This level of personalization gets much better results. But it would be nearly impossible to manage manually.

3. Improved Performance
Intelligent automation can even adjust your ads to get the most clicks and conversions possible within your budget, and it can shift spend to top-performing placements and targets automatically. Manually optimizing spending across campaigns is extremely difficult and automation handles it seamlessly for you.

4. Deeper Insights
Automation for digital ads helps you capture tons of data on how your ads are working across segments, platforms, times of day, and more. You can easily spot trends and patterns to improve strategy. These valuable insights are very hard to uncover without automation.

5. Brand Consistency
Automation also lets you coordinate ads across channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google etc. This amplifies your message while keeping branding consistent everywhere.

In summary, automation for digital ads drives better optimization, targeting, performance, insights and consistency, and perhaps most importantly – It just makes your life so much easier. Simply put, it’s a must for the modern marketer – pros and rookies alike.

What’s powering ad automation?

Several key technologies have enabled automated ad management to take off:

Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic ads use automation for planning, bidding, optimization, and reporting. This revolutionized digital advertising overnight.

Artificial Intelligence
Cutting-edge AI powers automation for digital ads by learning from data to optimize ads in real time. It delivers “set it and forget it” ad management.

Comprehensive Platforms
Comprehensive platforms like Evocalize’s Collaborative Marketing Platform provide seamless automation for ad creation, testing, targeting, and analytics, and make it push-button simple for even the least sophisticated marketers out there to launch sophisticated marketing programs that perform in just a few clicks.

Data Connectors
Hooking up external tools and data sources to your ad platform allows more triggers for automation. For example, syncing a sales database to adjust bids automatically based on conversions. These innovations mean ad automation will only get more powerful.

Using real-time data to drive ads

One of the most exciting parts of automation for digital ads is directly leveraging real-time data to optimize ads on the fly. Potential data sources that we have found extremely effective at Evocalize include:

  • Sales or order data
  • Web traffic
  • Weather
  • Inventory levels
  • Restaurant order data
  • Location signals
  • And anything else accessible through an API
Data to power automation for digital ads

This then allows us to offer automation options to our users like:

  • Launching hyper-targeted campaigns when sales spike
  • Showing certain ads when the weather shifts
  • Promoting products rapidly selling out
  • Boosting ads for trending menu items

The possibilities are endless. Automation lets you capitalize on real-time data at an enormous scale.

Best practices for ad automation

While automation for digital ads is extremely powerful, you need the right strategy to utilize it effectively:

Start Small
Begin with a few straightforward automations, then expand from there. Don’t bite off more than you can chew early on. For example, if you’re a real estate agent – start with something simple like; Every time I get a new listing priced over $500,000, automatically launch a listing ad on Facebook and Google.

Be Crystal Clear on Goals
Have unambiguous success metrics defined upfront – leads, sales, etc. This ensures your automations stay aligned.

Review and Refine Continuously
Monitor your automations regularly. Adjust targeting, bids, budgets, and creatives based on the results and trends you spot.

Maintain Clear Branding
Keep ad creative, messaging, and branding consistent across automated campaigns through templates and guidelines. By implementing the use automations into your normal marketing routine, you’re already halfway there.

Don’t Overcomplicate
Keep your initial automations simple. Avoid getting overly ambitious too quickly. Incremental complexity over time is best. With the right strategic approach, ad automation can transform your results.

Why ad automation for digital ads is the future

There’s no doubt automation has become essential for digital advertising success. Platforms like Evocalize make it accessible to any marketer. But human strategy and creativity remain just as crucial. Used properly, ad automation enables unprecedented scale, precision, and performance. Things that recently seemed impossible are now at your fingertips, regardless of experience or skill level.

On the other hand, brands still relying on purely manual ad management face inflated costs, disjointed messaging, and major competitive disadvantages. That’s why taking the time to implement thoughtful ad automation will be the #1 driver of advertising success going forward. Leverage all the data available to let automation work its magic. The future of digital advertising is automated. Now is the time to jump in and start benefiting.

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