Programmatic Buying

01

How programmatic buying works

When a website, app or digital out of home screen loads, the ad slot is put up for sale. The buying platform (DSP) assesses the impression by audience, location and price and places a bid. The media owner's selling platform (SSP) picks the winner, and the ad appears. The whole auction takes less than a second.

All media, budget and results are visible in one system. That is why money can move during the campaign to wherever it performs best.

02

What programmatic buying covers

The media plan sets the job of each channel. The buying decides where the impressions come from and at what price. We buy across news and special interest sites, online video, digital audio (music streaming, digital radio and podcasts) and around 3 200 digital out of home screens. The budget moves during the campaign to wherever results come from.

03

Open auction, private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed

In the open auction (RTB, real-time bidding) any buyer can bid. It gives the widest reach and the most flexible price, but environments need careful limits.

In a private marketplace (PMP) a media owner opens its ad space to selected buyers at an agreed floor price. In programmatic guaranteed (PG) the volume and price are agreed in advance as in a direct buy, but delivery and reporting run through the buying platform. A single campaign often uses all three.

04

Programmatic out of home

We choose screens on a map by city, screen type or individual location and split the budget by city or screen. In our campaigns, pDOOH has delivered a median of 33.5 % more impressions than planned.***

Shopping centres and transport hubs have delivered far more contacts than individual street screens.** So we weight the places where people move and make buying decisions.

05

Audience and frequency

We size the audience from NØRR3 Media Insights: we know how many people in the audience use each medium. Every restriction shrinks the audience and can raise the price, so we narrow only as far as the objective needs. Frequency gets a cap.

Retargeting reaches people who have already visited the site. Its audience is small, so its share is agreed by the objective.

06

Viewability and traffic quality

The click rate does not tell you whether the ad was seen. We measure viewability and invalid traffic with an independent tool in every flight. In our campaigns, the median viewability of programmatic display has been 74.1 %.*** If a site falls short, it goes on the exclusion list.

20.3 %* of 18 to 74-year-olds, around 803 000 people, say they use an ad blocker online. So the number of impressions bought does not equal the number of people reached.

07

Programmatic or direct

In our campaigns, programmatic display has delivered more clicks per impression than display bought direct from the media owner: a median click rate of 0.35 % vs 0.26 %. Direct buying has had slightly higher viewability, 79.8 % vs 74.1 %.***

Direct buying wins when the campaign needs a specific placement, a content partnership or the media owner's own audience data. Programmatic wins when the audience should be reached across many sites and the budget moved by results. We often do both in the same campaign.

08

Costs and results

Programmatic advertising is usually priced per thousand impressions (CPM). The price is set at auction and varies by targeting, format, environment and season: tight targeting and quality environments raise it, broad reach lowers it.

The cheapest impression is not the cheapest result. We report buys by publisher and format and judge the price against what the campaign delivered on the agreed metric. When the goal is a purchase or an enquiry, conversion tracking goes in before the first flight.

09

Assets for programmatic buying

Every format bought needs an asset. The DCO & Templates app in NØRR3 Marketing Engine produces versions in supported formats from an approved ad template, and store-specific offer versions are produced from a feed once the feed is connected and maintained.

10

What our campaigns have shown about buying

High-impact formats have cost two to three times more per impression than a standard banner, but their click rate has been several times higher, so each click has cost less.**

Sites close to the subject have often delivered better viewability or click rates than broad news sites. Regional newspapers have delivered better click rates, national media the volume.** So we choose publishers by the objective and judge them by results.

Retargeting gets the best click rate and all the credit. New people still deliver the result.**

11

FAQ

What does programmatic buying mean? Buying ad space automatically through software, at auction or at a price agreed in advance. The buyer sets the audience, environments and price, and the system places the bids.

What is the difference between programmatic and display advertising? Display is an ad format, programmatic is a way of buying. Display can be bought programmatically or direct from the media owner, and video, digital audio and out of home can also be bought programmatically.

What does programmatic advertising cost? The price is set at auction and depends on targeting, format, environment and season. From your brief we estimate how many people the budget reaches and how many times.

How do you keep ads out of poor environments? We measure viewability and traffic quality with an independent tool, update exclusion lists from the measurement and use private marketplaces where needed.

Can out of home be bought programmatically? Yes. Finland has around 3 200 digital out of home screens that can be bought programmatically, and a campaign can be limited to a city, a screen type or individual screens.

* NØRR3 Media Insights, Norstat panel, wave 9, August 2026, n = 2 022, aged 18 to 74. Question: which of the following describe you, self-reported use of an ad blocker online. Margin of error ±1.7 percentage points. ** NØRR3's own campaign bank, campaign reports 2024–2026: each lesson recurs in campaigns across at least two industries and two advertisers. *** NØRR3's own campaign bank, campaign reports 2024–2026, medians. Programmatic display: 108 campaigns and 34 advertisers. Display bought direct: 47 campaigns and 20 advertisers. pDOOH: 94 campaigns and 31 advertisers.