Get your Programmatic Advertising correct - 50 questions that you should ask your next Programmatic agency/Partner- -Sarang Kinjavdekar

Are you looking to work with a new Programmatic agency? Or do you think you want to go ahead with a self-serve model? Or are you looking for a mix between self-serve and managed model. Below are some of the questions that you should ask to your next Programmatic provider. The list is not comprehensive and is not in any particular order. I just created this list based on my learning and experiences

1.    Ask this question first to your Programmatic agency- What do you classify yourself as? A trading desk? A DSP? Something else? –This will help you to you understand whether you are dealing with a Middle Man or with a DSP directly or a mix.

2.    Which Demand side platform (DSP) do you use? Is it owned by you or is it a 3^rd party?

3.    How do you source Inventory across different device- Mobile, desktop, video, tablet etc.?

4.    Do you have Direct PMP deals or do you trade on the open exchanges?

5.    What is split of retargeting vs. prospecting?

6.    Technology agnostic?

7.    How do you detect fraud and what measures do you have in place? Ask them to share the fraud detection policy and measures.

8.    What are the skills of the team, how deep they are?- Do they have special people/positions for -Audience Segmentation Experts, Data Engineers, Business Intelligence, Media Strategists, traffickers, Bidding experts etc.

9.    Transparency in billing- they should be able to explain everything in the invoice

10.  How are the fees calculated?

11.  What models do buy- CPC, CPM, CPA, CPL etc.

12.  What post view and post-click conversion window d =o they apply to their client? Is it adjustable and possibility for adjusting to your own attribution modeling and attribution window

13.  Creative services offerings? If yes, how does the commercial goes?

14.  DE duplication process- ask them to explain in depth how are they going to tackle de-duplication  issues

15.  Which Data management platforms do they use or already integrated with/intend to use in future (if not using now)?

16.  Can they onboard your 1^st party data and make it actionable and start running 1^st Party Data campaigns?

17.  What is the report transparency- for instance- Can you get the domain level data or is it masked/truncated?

18.  Brand safety- How do they handle this critical issue?

19.  If they are DSP- do they provide self-serve model?

20.  Optimization Process in detail- What level of Automation does they offer?

21.  How many different kinds of targeting tactics can I run within a single campaign?

22.  Level of support and turnaround time- also ask for the downtime if any?

23.  Possibilities of training and learning Programmatic – for team members

24.  Product scalability

25.  Remnant vs Premium inventory split?

26.  Retargeting vs prospecting split?

27.  Do they offer Non incent traffic? If not what is the split of Non incent vs Incent traffic?

28.  Ad viewability- Is the ad viewable and are they bidding on Viewable impressions?

29.  Is my programmatic advertising optimized for all channels?

30.  Possibility of Campaign Integration with top ad exchanges and inventory sources?

31.  How are they tracking conversions?

32.  Which ad exchanges are partners?

33.  Does they support private marketplaces and/or publisher direct inventory sources?

34.  Run on Network vs Run on site split.

35.  Similarly – IATF (impressions above the fold) vs IMBF (impressions below the fold) – this also gets covered in Viewability

36.  Are there are minimum spend requirements? Monthly, Quarterly, Annual

37.  How do you manage privacy? –Especially for the Advertisers in Europe, GDPR is a very important issue that need to be tackled with carefully

38.  How fresh are your datasets?

39.  Which Stages Of Campaign Management Can You Manage? For instance-  pre-campaign learning, planning, data-driven creative design, real-time creative customization, media-buying execution, campaign optimization, and audience analysis services.

40.  Which Impression Attributes Can Your Technology Assess?- Time of day, Day of week, Geo-location, Culture (urban vs. suburban, etc.), Weather, Demographics, Interests, Prior engagement with the brand etc.

41.  What Media Sources Are Available With Your Platform?

42.  Can they Begin A New Campaign With 1^st Party or Pre-Existing Data?

43.  Ability to handle and integrate -1^st , 2^nd and 3^rd party data

44.  Which publishers are marketplace partners

45.  What is the content make-up of websites?

46.  Can you adapt the content to external triggers? Ex:  A chocolate brand does want want to appear next to a content , which says- dangers of eating sugar

47.  Optimization process and frequency

48.  What metrics are being tracked and how will you measure results?

49.  Do you outsource the work or have a trading desk in house?

50.  Integrations possibilities and capabilities- for instance- integration of your BI dashboard with the reporting system through APIs?