Self Service DSP vs Managed Services
These days, Programmatic Advertising offers a wide range of options for advertisers to reach their target audience when they want, and where they want. However, to many, Programmatic is considered highly complicated and requires a team of experts to ensure that your campaign delivers on time, performs and stays on budget.
Gourmet Ads offers a Managed Services Buyside offering which is ideal for advertisers that are seeking a White Glove Service or those with limited programmatic trading experience.
Our team does everything from Media Planning to Post Campaign reporting. The only thing we don’t do is Creative Design Services.
Our Managed Service is often compared to an advertiser using their own Self Service DSP to run the campaign. Generally speaking, these are the two of the most widely-used options for running advertising campaigns through a Programmatic Platform i.e. a Demand Side Platform. This article is to help you understand the differences between a typical Self Service DSP and our Managed Service offering.
Compare Self Service DSP vs Gourmet Ads’ Managed Services
Self Service DSP |
Gourmet Ads’ Managed Services |
|---|---|
Minimum Spend CommitmentsWe hear from advertisers that DSPs require minimum monthly spend commitments of between $20k to 100k which means you need to have annualized budgets of between $240k to $1.2M to get access. Depending on your campaign requirements you may need multiple DSPs to ensure you can execute your campaign. This could mean higher minimum spend commitments overall. In addition to the minimum spend of your DSP you also need to factor in Anti-Fraud, Contextual, and Data Segment costs. |
Minimum Spend Commitments
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Programmatic TradersYou’ll need to hire your own Programmatic Traders to plan and activate and run your campaigns. Apart from hiring Programmatic Traders, you need to consider constant training not only at the DSP level, but 3rd Party Software as Programmatic is constantly evolving. |
Programmatic TradersGourmet Ads has a team of Programmatic Traders around the globe with years of experience not only with DSPs but running campaigns across the Food Vertical. Our Traders have the luxury of working with multiple advertisers and the insights or learnings on one campaign helps other advertisers’ overtime. |
Media PlanningYour team needs to do your own Media Planning. |
Media PlanningOur team starts with understanding your campaign requirements from the ground up. We consider Target Audience, Target Content, Geotargeting, Website Target Lists as well as your KPIs. All Media Plans are developed collaboratively by our Media Planners, Ad Operations and Account Management Team who deliver an accurate forecast to ensure we can deliver the campaign in a timely manner. |
Demand Side PlatformDepending on your campaign requirements you may need multiple DSPs to ensure you can execute your campaign. This could mean higher minimum spend commitments overall. |
Demand Side PlatformGourmet Ads uses Xandr’s Invest DSP we’ve been working with Xandr since 2012. Apart from the learnings over this time we have deep account management relations at Xandr together with their product support team offering our team a high level of global support helping us solve issues quickly. |
Publisher RelationshipsYou will need to leverage your DSPs publisher relationships or begin building your own relationships. |
Publisher RelationshipsOne of Gourmet Ads’ unique selling points is our deep publisher relations as we’ve managed food publishers since 2008. Not only do we manage thousands of publishers our system company Healthy Ads (Health Websites) means we have high reach and control over campaigns running. We don’t need to rely on sell-side Open Exchange or publisher deals to deliver campaigns. In addition, we also have a significant number of hundreds of strategic publisher partnerships giving us unique access to their inventory once again not having to rely on Open Exchange buying. For some publishers we have preferred Deals in place. |
Contextual TargetingIf your Self Service DSP doesn’t offer Contextual Targeting, your will need to source your own Contextual Targeting Service which might require independent contracts and usage commitments. |
Contextual TargetingGourmet Ads has built its own Contextual Targeting Engine from the ground up and is used to power both our Managed Services and Programmatic Sell Side offering. Our system is built based on URLs as well as Keywords and Sentiment. Our Contextual Targeting Engine updates daily adding new URLs to Campaigns. We have over 300+ Off the Shelf Contextual targeting Segments across Recipe Targeting, Ingredient Targeting, Cuisine Targeting and Beverage Targeting. Our Programmatic Trading team can also build Custom Targeting Segments for just your campaign leveraging your brands, products, or even those of your competitors ! |
Data SegmentsYou will need to rely on your Self Service DSP for Data Segments to hunt out your own data relationships which might require independent contracts and usage commitments. |
Data SegmentsWe have access to 300k+ Data audience segments covering demographics, behavioral, B2B, purchase intent from major providers such as Oracle, Lotame, Eyeota, Bombora and Experian as examples. In addition, we have 50+ of our own audience segments related to the Food Vertical such as our Grocery Shopper Segment or Household Cooks Segment which are very popular with advertisers. |
Creative AuditingYou will need to rely on your Self Service DSP for their creative auditing process. |
Creative AuditingTo provide Publisher’s confidence in the Programmatic Marketplace, all advertising creatives we run in our Managed Service are audited by a 3rd Party auditing service. We do this for a few reasons, that the advertiser is legitimate, the brand or company is declared and the creative is safe and not running any malicious code. The costs of Creative Auditing are borne by us and is not a cost we charge or pass on to advertisers. |
Campaign ActivationYour team will need to traffic the campaign on your Self Service DSP. |
Campaign ActivationOur Programmatic Traders will take your Media Plan and build out all Line Items on our DSP prior to your campaign going live. Segments used for Retargeting Lines and created and shared with our Primary Contact on your team so they can be setup before the campaign going live. Whilst we wait for your advertising creatives to be audited, we have a serious of processes to ensure no errors in the setup as well as checking landing pages etc. Before we set the campaign live, at least 3 people have reviewed the setup before it is approved to go live. |
Campaign ReportingRunning a Self Service DSP you’ll need to rely on their platform reporting or you’ll need a 3rd Party Reporting service. |
Campaign ReportingGourmet Ads has a dedicated Reporting Platform with Realtime results called Advertiser.Report. This platform was designed from the ground up by our own team and is ideal for small to medium business that need easy to read reporting and insights. |
Automated OptimizationThis depends on your DSP of choice and if they offer this feature. |
Automated OptimizationOur Campaign Automated Optimization starts at the Media Planning Level which is to understand the advertisers campaign goals / KPIs which could be Cost Per Acquisition, Click Through Rate or a Viewability Metric. Gourmet Ads Automation Optimization leverages Data Science and Machine learning and runs constantly throughout the flight dates. |
Human OptimizationYour team will need to undertake all optimizations. |
Human OptimizationApart from our Automated Optimization we also have our team of Programmatic Traders review your campaign every day and where required will optimize the campaign. Apart from standard optimizations like removing websites that are not performing from a line item, We’ve Optimization Processes and time-tested Strategies that have been applied to thousands of campaigns since 2008 that help boost performance. |
RecommendationsYour team will need to undertake all recommendations. |
RecommendationsThroughout the campaign flight our Programmatic Trading team will provide recommendations on changes to the campaign midflight to increase performance. In addition to the Programmatic Trader on your campaign, our Programmatic Trading team takes a collaborative approach to help increase campaign performance working in consultation with Digital Advertising Veterans of 20+ years of experience running campaigns online. |
Anti-Fraud TacticsYou’ll need to engage with a 3rd Party Anti Fraud Provider and implement your on own traffic tactics to minimize fraud or bot traffic. |
Anti-Fraud TacticsGourmet Ads takes a multi pronged approach to minimization of fraud or bot traffic. First and foremost, we utilize Anti Fraud services such as DoubleVerify and IAS (Integral Ad Science. We have a global block list of domains which we’ve developed over thousands of campaigns. We also have tried and tested tactics to minimize bot traffic from running. We close with our DSP team on this ever changing processes. |
Post Campaign ReportYou will need to develop your own Post Campaign Reports from your Self Service DSP. |
Post Campaign ReportOur Ad Operations team and Programmatic Traders provide advertisers a Post Campaign Report which consists of observations from the campaign as well as recommendations for future campaigns. |
Let’s Get Started !
Let the Gourmet Ads team walk you through all the options available to ensure that your Food, Supermarket, Beverage or Kitchen advertising campaign has the best possible combination of Premium Guaranteed Inventory, Scale, First Party Data, Contextual Targeting and Programmatic Advertising elements.
