Programmatic Job Advertising and its potential5 min read

Programmic Job advertising has caused a lot of ink to flow since we first heard about it 3 years ago. According to Kenneth Kulbok from LinkedIn, Programmatic Advertising is ‘buying digital advertising space automatically, with computers using data to decide which ads to buy and how much to pay for them’. Therefore Programmatic Job Advertising is the process of using marketing practices and tools to build awareness about your opening positions. Such methods are broadly used in the US and the UK and are starting to spread in the rest of the European Union.

What is Programmatic Job Advertising?

Programmatic Job Advertising is a new way to post job adverts that has been revolutionizing the talent acquisition domain for about three years. In fact, it can be split into two different segments. The first one is mostly used within job boards, and the other one is used completely outside job board.

This technology is more efficient because it automates some of the manual processes. It helps talent acquisition professionals do what they aren’t capable of doing by themselves: make buying decisions based on live data and a pre-determined set of characteristics in a split second. In short, they use the best marketing methods to target the segment of the market that could be interested in your job position. In order to do so, they collect data about users and correlate it to find the profiles that would be more likely to click and apply to your job offer.

How it works and why it works

The big question is, of course, how does it work? Programmatic job advertising mostly runs on performance-based prices such as cost per click or cost per applicant. If you purchase this type of media, you will only be charged if you receive clicks or applications. Therefore it is not sold on a contract-basis like other job posts since you only pay after you see the results. In fact, it is sold via a “bidding” system based on the demand and competition at a given price which will determine the price per click or the price per application.

The first way to use programmatic job advertising, as we mentioned above, is within job boards. You use the cost per click or application system to buy according to real-time data and a set of characteristics on different job boards.

The second way to use it is outside job boards. That is to say that Instead of working with job boards, they will buy ad space, banners, etc. in any website, just like regular ads.

It is safe to say this technology could help companies to optimize their spending by using real-time data. Programmatic job advertising helps monitor what you want to buy per click or per application in a more proactive way and it also widens your campaign reach. This popular technology is mainly used by companies like Appcast, Recreuitics or Golden Bees.

What does it mean for the future of HR field?

Programmatic job advertising is thriving, especially in the US and the UK. In fact, recruitment industry experts predict that by 2020, 80% of all recruitment advertising will be based on programmatic campaigns using big data. We have also seen that, according to Zenith Optimedia, programmatic advertising has been rising at a rate of 71% per year worldwide since 2012. This means that it went from 5% of the expenditures in advertising in 2012 to 58% today. This rate is even higher for the leading countries using it that are the US (62% of the expenditures are programmatic advertising which represents $24 billion) the UK ($3.3 billion) and China ($2.6 billion).

Given the changes programmatic adverting brought to the advertising field, we cannot neglect the changes it will bring to the HR field. It means that less people will be needed to recruit since more things will be automated. However, we will need more people to understand data and use it to match the recruiting goals. This also means that companies will have an expert (internally or externally) to help them use this new technology. Someone who understands data and can translate the budget and the company needs into an effective strategy. Finally, the current programmatic job advertising technology will move from performance based advertising channels to technologies that can also use credits automatically, which companies  will have purchased from non-performance based recruitment advertising channels. But we cannot avoid talking about the possible limits of this trend.

The possible downsides

There are some important limits that we cannot ignore when working with programmatic job advertising. Usually, algorithms process huge amount of data to define which ads should be placed where and when. This is made possible thanks to the equally huge amount of interesting data users leave behind them (gender, age, interests, localization…). This can be analysed to find a buyer profile. However, users don’t usually leave data that may help assess whether they are engineers or a salesmen.

Moreover some limits such as the massive number of people using ad-block software (software that will stop ads from showing up) could make it less interesting to us programmatic advertising.

 In fact in France 34% of the population uses an ad-block software. Worldwide, more than 615 million devices use it (15% of the Internet users).

Plus, without the proper analytics, programmatic job advertising isn’t worth it. You don’t know for sure where your ads will show up, and if the price per click is low, you run the risk of getting irrelevant clicks.

To conclude

For now, it is not possible to say whether it is the best solution for a quick, low-cost, efficient recruitment campaign since there are many grey areas. It would definitely improve the efficiency of recruitment if we were able to collect more relevant information about users, which is going to be more and more complicated in Europe given the new legislation (GDPR).

Finally, we must not forget the strength of Job boards. Even if programmatic job advertising seems tremendously fantastic on paper, it is important to use it in moderation. Programmatic job advertising outside of a job board will have trouble surpassing traditional job boards since job boards create more traffic by retargeting job offers. They are an important market place.

We hope you have found this article “Programmatic Job Advertising and its potential to cross the European borders” useful! Please let us know if you’d like us to cover any specific topics in the Jobboard Finder blog 

Author: Armelle