Optimizing across paid media channels and within paid media channels is an endless task. One might even call it Sisyphean.
No sooner has a team (agency or client-side) optimized media around the KPIs handed down from above, the media landscape changes. Let’s delve into exactly why this is the case:
- Competitive bidding in programmatic, or paid search / social
- macro-economic changes or changes in consumer confidence impacting conversion rates
- Items go out of stock
- Algo changes by the platform (Google is famous for this in paid search particularly)
- Surge in fraudulent impressions or clicks within one channel or platform
- Creative burnout
The constant re-optimization can’t be fully automated, and that keeps agency and client-side marketers on their toes.
The same issue manifests itself on the publisher/platform side of the equation. Ad-Operations folks in charge of yield management are constantly moving levers around based on changes in demand for inventory.
The promise of AI-based optimization is hypothetically going to free up the optimizers on both the advertiser and publisher side of the ecosystem, but I have a feeling it will be quite a while before an AI alone can see the big picture and do the job of a great optimization team.
