PROGRAMMATICRECRUITMENTADVERTISINGThe Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online

Every now and again, a technology comes along that promises to revolutionize the world of media buying. First it was performance-based advertising, which allows advertisers to pay based on how well the advertisement works. For recruiters, that means a pay-per-click or pay-per-application pricing model.

The newest kid on the block is programmatic — the concept of using technology, not people, to buy, place, and manage ads. Compared to other ad-buying methods, programmatic promises to deliver exactly the right ad to exactly the right audience at exactly the right time, and at far greater speeds than any human could achieve. The result? A dramatically higher return on advertising spend.

Over the past seven or eight years, programmatic advertising has become a goldmine for digital marketers. So much so, in fact, that take-up rates are set to become stratospheric. This year, an estimated $16 billion (that's billion), worth of advertising will be purchased through automated software programs, the technology that underpins programmatic. That figure is set to reach $33 billion by 2017 — about triple the current levels of spending.

Which begs the question, if programmatic is such a boon for digital marketers, shouldn't recruiters — whom we are always beseeching to think more like marketers — be leveraging the technology, too?

After all, where consumer markets go, recruiters tend to follow. Performance-based advertising, made popular by Google's AdWords model, has (finally) captured the lion's share of recruitment advertising spend. The shift away from older, duration-based advertising models has accelerated rapidly as a result.

Programmatic simply boosts efficiency. By using software to continually optimize the placement of job advertisements, recruiters can gain the highest conversion rates at the job level. That means reducing the number of jobs that have too many applies. It means reducing the number of jobs that have too few applies. And, crucially, it means spending far less money to generate that holy grail of recruiting - the quality apply.

The fact is, digital marketers see incredible results when they let data and software handle the buying and placing of advertisements. There is every reason to believe that recruiters could achieve the same results. And that, in a nutshell, is why programmatic recruitment advertising represents one of the most significant developments in our industry.

The aim of this white paper is to give you an overview of programmatic, how it works, how it could impact your talent acquisition, and how you can leverage it to strengthen and improve your recruitment advertising. We will conclude with a brief look at where the industry is headed and an exhortation to prepare for this inevitable industry shift.

I do hope you find it useful.

Chris Forman,Founder and CEO

of Appcast

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising. The Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online.

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Programmatic advertising is the buying, placement and optimization of ads performed by software, rather than people.

Executive SummaryProgrammatic techniques and technologies are transforming the consumer advertising marketplace.

It is expected that, this year, 55% of all U.S. digital display ads will be bought using programmatic buys. This makes programmatic the fastest growing segment of the digital advertising industry.

Job advertising has always followed the macro trends of the broader online advertising market, usually with a five to seven-year time lag.

Recruiters now sit at the cusp of the next tectonic shift in ad-buying — programmatic of the job advertising space.

Programmatic simply means automated.

Programmatic advertising is the buying, placement and optimization of ads performed by software, rather than people.

What is Programmatic Advertising?Much has been written about programmatic advertising and almost every author has a different take on what programmatic advertising actually is. Certainly a lot of people confuse it with buying ads through real-time bidding—a type of computer-run auction—but that is just one way to buy ads programmatically. So, let's cut through the jargon.

It works like this: The buyer plugs into an automated system for buying ad space, like a stock exchange. He or she enters demographic details, known as rules, about the ideal customer and how many of them he or she wants to reach. Then the software takes over.

Programmatic gathers browsing data and uses complex algorithms to show people the right ads, at the right time, in the right place, based on their likelihood to engage with the advertisement.

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising. The Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online.

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How Does Programmatic AdvertisingWork in Recruitment?Programmatic recruitment advertising works in exactly the same way as programmatic consumer advertising. But instead of placing ads for products and services, technology is deployed to automate the buying and placement of job openings through networks of job-related websites on either a pay-per-click or pay-per-application basis.

The process is extremely simple:

The recruiter imports a job from their ATS or career site.

The recruiter sets their total budget allocation, as well as what they are willing to pay for each click or application.

The recruiter sets the “rules” based on their business objectives, such as demographics of the target applicant, number of applies they want for a particular job or job group, and budget.

The recruiter hits the "buy" button.

The programmatic software takes care of the rest.

Before programmatic, the process for buying recruitment advertising was labor intensive and notoriously inefficient. Recruiters would have to research the best on-or-offline space to place a job ad, engage in an administration-heavy process of discovering pricing and availability from multiple publishers or vendors, place orders, and manually load the copy into the ad server. And all of these processes took place before the job ad had even begun running.

With programmatic, advertisers can buy ads the way they might buy something on Amazon.com. A few mouse clicks and they're done.

With programmatic, advertisers can buy ads the way they might buy something on Amazon.com. A few mouse clicks and they're done.

Why Should Recruiters Care?Recruiters should care because the benefits that programmatic advertising has shown in the consumer space are similar to the benefits we are beginning to see inside the recruitment space. Specifically, cost-effective access to a large and hyper-targeted number of job-seekers across all content and devices.

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The business case is compelling. Take a look at the following benefits:

Precision Targeting: Since artificial intelligence makes better placement decisions than people, programmatic allows for accurate and successful audience targeting. For recruiters, that means smartly engineering the allocation of advertising dollars towards critical and hard-to-fill vacancies that need applications. In other words:

You reduce the number of jobs that have too many applies.

You reduce the number of jobs that have too few applies.

You spend less money to generate a quality apply.

You get more bang for your advertising buck.

Optimized Conversion: Historically, recruiters contracted with a handful of publishers to run job advertisements. These contracts were typically for a fixed budget amount over a fixed period of time. Programmatic surpasses any one job board, publisher or job site. The algorithm automatically optimizes which publisher is used for the highest conversion rate for each job posting.

Efficiency: Programmatic is capable of making "in-flight" adjustments in real time. This means that ads are optimized instantaneously, rather than quarterly or annually when the performance of those ads is reviewed. Since humans cannot compete with the real-time analytical capabilities of software, programmatic provides immediate cost savings and a higher return on investment (ROI).

Value: Programmatic is supported by a performance-based pricing structure which facilitates an increased ROI. And, since automated processes decrease the labor-intensive resources usually associated with ad-buying operations, recruiters are freed up to focus on creative and value-added activities.

Programmatic is capable of making "in-flight" adjustments in real time. This means that ads are optimized instantaneously.

Since artificial intelligence makes better placement decisions than people, programmatic allows for accurate and successful audience targeting.

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising. The Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online.

Every now and again, a technology comes along that promises to revolutionize the world of media buying. First it was performance-based advertising, which allows advertisers to pay based on how well the advertisement works. For recruiters, that means a pay-per-click or pay-per-application pricing model.

The newest kid on the block is programmatic — the concept of using technology, not people, to buy, place, and manage ads. Compared to other ad-buying methods, programmatic promises to deliver exactly the right ad to exactly the right audience at exactly the right time, and at far greater speeds than any human could achieve. The result? A dramatically higher return on advertising spend.

Over the past seven or eight years, programmatic advertising has become a goldmine for digital marketers. So much so, in fact, that take-up rates are set to become stratospheric. This year, an estimated $16 billion (that's billion), worth of advertising will be purchased through automated software programs, the technology that underpins programmatic. That figure is set to reach $33 billion by 2017 — about triple the current levels of spending.

Which begs the question, if programmatic is such a boon for digital marketers, shouldn't recruiters — whom we are always beseeching to think more like marketers — be leveraging the technology, too?

After all, where consumer markets go, recruiters tend to follow. Performance-based advertising, made popular by Google's AdWords model, has (finally) captured the lion's share of recruitment advertising spend. The shift away from older, duration-based advertising models has accelerated rapidly as a result.

Programmatic simply boosts efficiency. By using software to continually optimize the placement of job advertisements, recruiters can gain the highest conversion rates at the job level. That means reducing the number of jobs that have too many applies. It means reducing the number of jobs that have too few applies. And, crucially, it means spending far less money to generate that holy grail of recruiting - the quality apply.

The fact is, digital marketers see incredible results when they let data and software handle the buying and placing of advertisements. There is every reason to believe that recruiters could achieve the same results. And that, in a nutshell, is why programmatic recruitment advertising represents one of the most significant developments in our industry.

The aim of this white paper is to give you an overview of programmatic, how it works, how it could impact your talent acquisition, and how you can leverage it to strengthen and improve your recruitment advertising. We will conclude with a brief look at where the industry is headed and an exhortation to prepare for this inevitable industry shift.

I do hope you find it useful.

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Is It Just a Fad?Advertisers are turning to programmatic in droves.

This year, an estimated $16 billion worth of advertising will be purchased through programmatic platforms. That figure is set to reach $33 billion by 2017 according to forecasts from Magna Global —and is expected to increase year on year over the next decade. According to eMarketer, this year 55% of all U.S. digital display ads will be purchased using programmatic buys. This makes it the fastest growing segment of the digital advertising sector.

As for the programmatic value proposition, more than 90 percent of marketers in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Japan consistently report that programmatic retargeting campaigns perform better than other display campaigns.

In fact, most commentators have concluded that programmatic is the opposite of a fad, and will soon become the standard for how digital advertising is bought and sold. It is conceivable that there will be no option other than programmatic advertising for all media buys in the future.

Where Consumer Advertising Goes,Recruitment Follows....

Reported in eMarketer “Programmatic Ad Spend Set to Soar.”Available from http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Programmatic-Ad-Spend-Set-Soar/1010343

Fisher, Lauren T. “Programmatic Advertising 2015 Outlook.”Available from http://www.slideshare.net/eMarketerInc/emarketer-webinar-programmatic-advertising-2015-outlook

Reported in iMedia “The CMO’s Guide to Programmatic.”Available from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/38865.asp

Adweek, “Programmatic for Dummies: Everyone Says It’s Exploding, But What Is It?”Available from http://www.adweek.com/news-gallery/advertising-branding/programmatic-dummies-153590#what-programmatic-anyway-1

According to eMarketer, 55% of all U.S. digital display ads will be purchased using programmatic buys. This makes it the fastest growing segment of the digital

Programmatic will become the standard for how digital advertising is bought and sold.

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Over the past two decades, the evolution of job ad buying has followed in lockstep with digital ad buying.

Back in the 1990's, the Internet had 'walled gardens' as sites like AOL and MSN served as the medium for advertisers to reach consumers browsing the web. Five years later, recruitment followed the same model. Job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder sprang up, moving recruiters away from the classifieds by providing a web-based ecosystem where recruiters could find people looking for work.

Soon after the recruitment industry got comfortable with this model, Google AdWords shook up the consumer advertising world with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. At the time, AdWords was a paradigm shift. Yet predictably, five years later, recruitment followed suit. Platforms like Indeed and SimplyHired launched their own PPC models that enabled recruiters to spread their budget across sites where the candidates they needed were looking, and spend only when someone clicked to view a posting.

On average, there has been about a five to seven-year lag between the changes that take place in digital advertising and when we start to see those changes in recruitment. Programmatic represents the next leap forward—and it started approximately five years ago.

This year, we expect to see programmatic explode in recruitment. We predict at least a 25% adoption rate — up from the current rate of 5 to 9% — and very aggressive growth rates going forward. This is consistently in line with the time frame for digital adoption.

The message then, is this: ignore programmatic at your peril. Where digital goes, recruitment always follows. Recruiters who do not embrace it will be left out in the cold.

We have looked deeply at programmatic trends and the adoption we are seeing in the recruitment media space in the United States. From our view, we believe that recruitment advertising will follow in lockstep with the adoption of programmatic advertising we are seeing outside of jobs and expect that, within the next 3 to 5 years, 70% to 80% of all job ads will be placed in a programmatic platform.

“—Chris Forman

On average, there has been a five to seven-year lag between the changes that take place in digital advertising and when we start to see those changes in recruitment.

Programmatic represents the next leap forward—and it started approximately five years ago.

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising. The Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online.

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ConclusionFor major brands, programmatic is no longer an experiment. It is now part of their long-term marketing strategy. As the value proposition becomes increasingly apparent for recruiters, programmatic recruitment growth rates should accelerate dramatically in the next few years.

The fact is, where digital marketers go, recruiters always follow. We've seen it with job boards and we've seen it with PPC. With the rest of the digital world marching towards programmatic, there is simply no way that recruiting can stay stuck in the classifieds.

Today, software companies such as Recruitics and Appcast are playing a major role in bringing programmatic to the fore in the recruitment space. By providing employers and recruiters with tools to automate how they measure and optimize their advertising channels, these providers, and others like them, are taking the guesswork out of how to get the highest returns from their recruitment advertising spend.

The bottom line is that programmatic advertising is another paradigm shift, and its message to recruiters is clear—wise up, or get left behind.

Recruiting on AppcastOn January 1, 2014, StartDate Labs launched Appcast™, the industry's first pay-per-applicant job ad exchange. Appcast allows talent acquisition leaders to focus their recruitment advertising budgets more efficiently by charging only when a job application is completed on an employer's corporate career site.

Appcast brings advanced programmatic online ad buying to the human recruitment capital market. Above and beyond the pay-per-applicant pricing model, Appcast's 'rules-based buying' engine delivers great applicants to the recruitment portal and ensures budget dollars are focused exclusively on hard-to-fill or critical vacancies that need applications.

Already utilized by hundreds of leading companies, Appcast is focused on maximizing the efficiency of recruiting ad spend in a streamlined, user-friendly way. Hiring managers set the rules on how they wish to sponsor jobs and how much they are willing to pay. There are no minimum budgets or long-term contracts.

To learn more about Appcast and sign up for a demo, visit:www.appcast.io

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising. The Better Way to Promote Job Ads Online.