Programmatic Advertising Explained: How It Works and Why It's the Smarter Way to Buy Ads

Introduction

Every second, more than 1.2 trillion real-time bids are placed across the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Your competitors are in that auction. Are you? Most business owners are pouring budget into Google and Meta, and while those platforms absolutely have their place, they represent a fraction of the web and pit you against every other advertiser inside the same walled garden. Programmatic advertising opens the door to the rest of the internet, letting you reach your audience wherever they actually spend time, not just where two tech giants happen to operate.

By the end of this post, you'll understand exactly how programmatic advertising works, how it differs from traditional digital ad buying, and how to decide whether it belongs in your marketing stack. We'll walk through the technology, the targeting, the creative, the measurement, and the honest truth about when it works and when it doesn't. This post is written from Sproutbox's perspective. Sproutbox is a Portland-based full-service digital marketing agency specializing in digital advertising, SEO, and content strategy, and we've helped businesses of all sizes figure out where programmatic fits in a smart, integrated marketing plan.

What Is Programmatic Advertising? (The Plain-English Version)

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory using software, data, and real-time auctions. Think about the old way of buying ads: a salesperson at a media company negotiates a placement deal with a brand's media buyer, they agree on a price, and an ad runs on a specific website for a set period. That process takes days or weeks, involves spreadsheets and contracts, and offers limited targeting flexibility. Programmatic replaces all of that with software that completes the same transaction in under 100 milliseconds, every time a user loads a webpage, and with far more precision.

According to eMarketer, more than 90% of all US digital display ads are now bought programmatically. That's not a niche tactic, it's the dominant infrastructure of digital advertising. Understanding it isn't optional for serious marketers anymore. Here are the core terms you need to know.

• Programmatic advertising: The umbrella term for automated, data-driven ad buying. It covers multiple formats, display, video, native, audio, and connected TV, all purchased through software rather than direct human negotiation.
• Impression: A single instance of an ad being served to a user. Programmatic campaigns are typically measured and priced in CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
• Real-time bidding (RTB): The auction mechanism that determines which ad wins a given impression. Multiple advertisers bid simultaneously, and the winner's ad renders on the page, all before it finishes loading.
• Ad exchange: The automated marketplace where publishers and advertisers meet. Think of it as the stock exchange for digital ad inventory.
• Demand-side platform (DSP): The software advertisers or agencies use to buy inventory across multiple ad exchanges from one interface. The Trade Desk, Google's DV360, and Amazon DSP are well-known examples.
• Supply-side platform (SSP): The software publishers use to manage and sell their ad inventory to the highest bidder. SSPs connect directly to ad exchanges to maximize publisher revenue.

The Three Players: Advertisers, Publishers, and the Auction in Between

The programmatic ecosystem has three core participants. Understanding how they interact makes the whole system click into place.

1. The Advertiser (Demand Side): A brand or agency uses a DSP like The Trade Desk or Google's DV360 to define who they want to reach, what they're willing to pay, and what creative to show. They set targeting parameters, audience segments, geographies, device types, bid limits, and the DSP goes out and competes in auctions on their behalf.
2. The Publisher (Supply Side): A website, app, or streaming platform uses an SSP to package and offer its available ad inventory to the market. The publisher sets a floor price (minimum acceptable bid) and the SSP connects that inventory to ad exchanges where buyers compete for it.
3. The Exchange (The Auction): The ad exchange sits in the middle and runs the auction in real time. When a user navigates to a webpage, the publisher's SSP sends a bid request to the exchange. The exchange notifies eligible DSPs, which evaluate the opportunity against their targeting parameters and submit bids. The winning bid is determined in milliseconds, and the winning advertiser's ad renders on the page.

Walk through a single impression: a user in Portland opens a recipe blog. Before the page fully loads, the publisher's SSP fires a bid request containing anonymized data about that user, their browsing behavior, device, location, and the context of the page. A Portland kitchen supply brand's DSP (let's say they're running on The Trade Desk) evaluates the request, determines it matches their target audience, and bids $4.50 CPM. A competing national brand bids $4.20. The kitchen supply brand wins, their banner ad loads, and the user sees it, all in under 100 milliseconds. The Google Display Network works on similar principles, though it's one walled-garden slice of the broader programmatic ecosystem.

Real-Time Bidding vs. Programmatic Direct vs. Private Marketplace

Not all programmatic buying works the same way. There are three main purchasing models, each with its own tradeoffs between scale, cost, and control.

• Real-Time Bidding (RTB): The open auction model where any eligible advertiser can bid on any available impression. The highest bid wins. RTB delivers massive scale and efficiency, making it ideal for broad prospecting campaigns where reach matters more than precise placement.
• Programmatic Direct: The publisher and advertiser agree on a fixed CPM price and a guaranteed volume of impressions in advance. The transaction is still automated, but there's no competitive auction. This is the right choice when you want a specific, brand-safe placement (think a major news site homepage) and predictable inventory.
• Private Marketplace (PMP): An invite-only RTB auction where premium publishers offer exclusive inventory to a select group of advertisers. You get the efficiency of real-time bidding with the quality control of curated placements. PMPs are well-suited for brands that want premium audiences without the brand safety risks of the open auction.

The practical rule: use open RTB for scale, programmatic direct for predictable brand-safe placements, and a private marketplace for the best of both worlds when you have the budget and relationships to access one. Most sophisticated programmatic strategies use a mix of all three.

How Programmatic Advertising Targets the Right Audience

Audience targeting is the core reason programmatic advertising outperforms traditional media buying. Instead of buying an ad slot on a website and hoping the right person sees it, programmatic lets you buy access to a specific type of person, wherever they happen to be across the open web. The targeting options are extensive, and layering them intelligently is where real campaign performance comes from.

• Behavioral targeting: Ads are served based on a user's browsing history, purchase behavior, and online activity. If someone has been researching home renovation contractors for the past two weeks, they can be targeted by a hardware store, a home improvement brand, or a local contractor service, even when they're reading a sports article.
• Contextual targeting: Instead of targeting the user, this method targets the content of the page. An ad for outdoor gear runs on a hiking trail guide. A dental practice ad runs on a health and wellness publication. Contextual targeting has surged in relevance as third-party data becomes less available, and it doesn't depend on user tracking at all.
• Geographic and location targeting: Campaigns can be scoped to a country, state, metro area, city, radius, or ZIP code. For Portland businesses, this means zeroing in on the metro while optionally expanding reach across the Pacific Northwest. A Beaverton HVAC company doesn't need impressions in Miami, and programmatic makes that precision easy.
• Retargeting and remarketing: One of the highest-ROI applications of programmatic. Users who visited your website, viewed a product page, or started a checkout can be followed across the open web with relevant ads. Unlike retargeting within a single platform's ecosystem, programmatic retargeting reaches those users everywhere, not just inside Facebook or Google.
• Lookalike and audience extension: DSPs can analyze your existing customers and find new users who share similar characteristics. This is prospecting at scale, using data intelligence to find the next version of your best customers before they've ever heard of you.
• First-party data targeting: Your own customer data, email lists, CRM contacts, website visitor lists, can be uploaded into a DSP or data management platform (DMP) to reach known audiences directly. This is precision targeting at its highest form, and it's increasingly the most valuable asset in any programmatic strategy.

A critical shift is underway in how programmatic targeting works. For years, behavioral targeting relied heavily on third-party data: cookies dropped by ad networks that tracked users across the web. That era is winding down. The combination of browser-level cookie restrictions and growing privacy regulations means third-party data is becoming less reliable and less available. Advertisers who haven't started building their first-party data strategy are already behind.

Why Third-Party Cookies Changing Everything (And What Smart Advertisers Are Doing Instead)

Google has been in an extended transition away from third-party cookies in Chrome, and while the timeline has shifted, the direction hasn't. Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies by default. The practical effect for programmatic advertisers: behavioral targeting that relies on third-party data to identify and follow users across the web is becoming less precise and less reliable. This isn't a reason to panic, but it is a reason to adapt now rather than scramble later.

The smart response has three parts. First, contextual targeting is having a genuine resurgence, because it targets the content of the page, not the identity of the user, and therefore doesn't depend on cookies at all. Second, first-party data activation is becoming the most important competitive differentiator in programmatic. If you have a strong email list or CRM, that data can be activated through customer match features on DSPs to reach your actual customers and find people like them. Third, publisher-level authenticated audiences are growing in value: premium publishers like major news sites are building logged-in user bases that can be targeted based on declared data rather than tracked behavior.

At Sproutbox, we help clients build programmatic advertising strategy that's designed for durability, not just the current moment. That means auditing first-party data assets early, building the infrastructure to capture and activate that data, and treating contextual signals as a primary targeting layer rather than a fallback. The transition away from third-party cookies is making programmatic harder for lazy advertisers and better for disciplined ones.

Programmatic Advertising vs. Google Ads vs. Social Ads: What's the Difference?

All three are digital advertising channels. All three can drive real business results. But they operate on fundamentally different mechanisms, serve different roles in the funnel, and reach audiences in different mental states. Treating them as interchangeable is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in digital marketing.

Channel Comparison: Reach, Intent, Format, and Best Use

• Programmatic Advertising, Reach: Virtually the entire open web, including display, video, native, audio, and connected TV across millions of sites and apps outside any single platform.
• Google Ads, Reach: Google Search results, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. Powerful, but contained within Google's ecosystem.
• Social Ads, Reach: Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X. Large audiences, but within the specific platforms where users have accounts.
• Programmatic Advertising, Intent Signal: Behavioral and contextual. You're reaching people based on who they are and what content they consume, not what they're actively searching for right now.
• Google Search Ads, Intent Signal: Active keyword intent. These users are in the market right now, searching for exactly what you offer. It's the highest-intent traffic available in digital advertising.
• Social Ads, Intent Signal: Interest and demographic. Users aren't searching for your product, but they match the profile of someone who might want it. Strong for awareness and community building.
• Programmatic Advertising, Formats: Display banners, HTML5 animated display, native ads, pre-roll and mid-roll video, connected TV (CTV) and OTT, audio, and digital out-of-home (DOOH). The broadest format range of any channel.
• Google Ads, Formats: Text search ads, shopping ads, display banners, YouTube video ads, and responsive ads. Strong for bottom-of-funnel capture.
• Social Ads, Formats: Feed posts, Stories, Reels, carousel ads, sponsored content, and video. Highly visual and native to the platform experience.
• Programmatic Advertising, Best For: Building brand awareness at scale, retargeting visitors across the open web, reaching audiences at the top and middle of the funnel across multiple touchpoints and screens.
• Google Search Ads, Best For: Capturing bottom-of-funnel demand from people who are actively ready to buy. The most efficient channel for direct response when intent is explicit.
• Social Ads, Best For: Community building, brand awareness, retargeting within social platforms, and reaching interest-based audiences with visual storytelling.

The most important takeaway here: these channels are not competing for the same job. Google Ads captures demand that already exists. Social ads build connection and awareness within platforms. Programmatic reaches people everywhere else, at every stage of the funnel, across every screen. The most effective advertising programs treat all three as complementary layers of an integrated digital marketing stack rather than alternatives to each other.

When Programmatic Is the Right Choice (And When It Isn't)

Programmatic is a powerful tool. It's not a universal one. Here's an honest framework for thinking about fit.

Programmatic is a strong fit when:

1. You have a defined audience and want to reach them at scale beyond the reach of search and social platforms.
2. You're running an awareness or consideration campaign that needs to reach people across multiple touchpoints, not just when they're searching.
3. You want to retarget website visitors across the open web, following them beyond the walls of any single platform.
4. Your budget supports meaningful scale. Most programmatic campaigns need at least $2,000–$5,000 per month in media spend to generate enough data to optimize effectively.
5. You have quality creative assets ready. Programmatic display and video campaigns live or die on the creative.

Programmatic may not be the right starting point when:

1. You haven't yet validated your offer with search or social. If you don't know what messaging converts, programmatic will scale your uncertainty, not your results.
2. Your budget is very limited. A $500/month programmatic campaign won't generate enough impression data to optimize, and that money is almost always better deployed in Google Ads where intent is explicit.
3. You lack strong creative assets. A blurry logo on a static banner won't perform, and in programmatic, creative quality directly determines whether an impression converts to any meaningful engagement.

The Sproutbox Programmatic Advertising Playbook: 5 Levers That Actually Move the Needle

After running programmatic campaigns across dozens of industries, we've distilled our approach into a named framework we use internally and with every client: The Sproutbox Programmatic Advertising Playbook. It's built around five levers that, when pulled in the right sequence and calibrated consistently, separate programmatic campaigns that build real business results from the ones that burn through budget and leave everyone confused. The technology is available to anyone with a DSP login. The discipline behind these five levers is what differentiates performance.

1. Audience Architecture: Before a single dollar of media spend is committed, we build layered audience segments covering three tiers: cold prospecting audiences (behavioral and lookalike targeting to find new customers), warm retargeting audiences (website visitors, page-specific visitors, video viewers), and CRM match audiences (first-party customer data uploaded and activated in the DSP). Running without this architecture is like running a Google Ads campaign with no ad groups, technically possible, practically inefficient.
2. Creative Sequencing: The same audience shouldn't see the same ad message at every stage of their journey. We map different creative to different funnel stages: awareness creative that introduces the brand and builds recognition, consideration creative that highlights proof points and differentiators, and conversion creative that drives a specific action with a clear CTA. This mirrors how great salespeople communicate, they don't pitch on the first handshake.
3. Frequency Governance: One of the fastest ways to kill a programmatic campaign is letting the same user see the same ad 15 times in a week. Ad fatigue is real, measurable, and destructive to both performance and brand perception. We set intelligent frequency caps by audience segment and creative, adjusting them as campaigns mature and as we see engagement signals shift.
4. Brand Safety Configuration: Not all of the open web is a good environment for your brand. DSPs allow detailed inclusion and exclusion lists, as well as contextual filters that prevent ads from appearing next to inappropriate content. We build brand safety configurations specific to each client, covering content category exclusions, site-level blocklists, and viewability thresholds, because an ad served in a bad environment can do more harm than no ad at all.
5. Closed-Loop Attribution: Impressions and clicks are inputs, not outcomes. We build attribution frameworks that connect programmatic activity back to actual business results: leads generated, form fills, phone calls, purchases, and pipeline influenced. Reporting dashboards are built around what success means for each specific client. We don't just run programmatic ads, we run them with a clear view of what they're supposed to accomplish for your business.

How to Measure Programmatic Ad Performance (Beyond Impressions and CTR)

Here's something that surprises most new programmatic advertisers: the average click-through rate (CTR) for programmatic display ads is 0.1% to 0.3%. If you're expecting search-ad-style CTRs, programmatic looks like it's failing. It usually isn't. Display advertising operates primarily at the awareness and consideration layers, it's building recognition and influencing decisions that often convert through a different channel later. Judging programmatic by CTR alone is like judging a billboard by how many people stopped their cars to call the number.

A more useful measurement framework looks at performance in tiers, tied to actual campaign goals.

• Awareness metrics: Total reach (unique users reached), frequency (average number of times each user saw the ad), viewability rate (target 70% or higher, meaning at least 70% of served impressions were actually visible on screen), and completed video view rate for any video formats.
• Engagement metrics: Post-click site behavior from programmatic traffic in GA4: pages per session, time on site, bounce rate, and which pages users visit after clicking. A low CTR with high post-click engagement tells you the targeting is right.
• Conversion metrics: View-through conversions (users who were served your ad and later converted, even without clicking), assisted conversions in GA4, cost per lead, and cost per acquisition. View-through attribution is particularly important for programmatic because direct-click attribution dramatically undercounts its real contribution.
• Business metrics: Pipeline influenced, revenue attributed, and customer lifetime value where data permits. This is the ultimate scorecard, not how many impressions ran, but what changed in the business as a result.

Sproutbox builds reporting dashboards that surface the marketing metrics that actually matter for each client's specific goals. If your goal is leads, we're not celebrating a 2 million impression count that produced zero form fills. If your goal is brand awareness ahead of a product launch, we're not fixating on CPL. Measurement should follow the strategy, not the other way around.

What a Professionally Managed Programmatic Campaign Looks Like

Programmatic technology is powerful. A poorly managed programmatic campaign is also one of the fastest ways to watch a marketing budget disappear with nothing to show for it. The DSP doesn't care if your targeting is wrong, your creative is weak, or your attribution is broken. It will spend your money either way. Active, skilled management is what turns programmatic from an expensive experiment into a repeatable performance channel. Here's how we run it.

1. Step 1: Onboarding and Strategy. Every campaign starts with clarity, not creative. We define specific campaign goals (awareness, lead generation, retargeting, or a combination), agree on KPIs before spend begins, map the audience segments we'll be targeting, and conduct an audit of existing first-party data assets, email lists, CRM records, pixel audiences, customer match lists. If those assets are thin, we build a plan to grow them alongside the campaign.
2. Step 2: Research and Audience Build. We analyze the competitive landscape to understand who else is bidding for the same audiences and what CPM ranges look like in the relevant categories. We construct audience segments inside the DSP, layering behavioral, contextual, and first-party signals. We develop the creative brief covering the formats needed, the messaging hierarchy for each funnel stage, and the calls to action. Nothing launches until the audience architecture is solid.
3. Step 3: Launch. Campaign configuration covers bid strategy (target CPM vs. optimized CPM depending on the goal), brand safety settings, site inclusion and exclusion lists, viewability thresholds, creative trafficking across all formats and sizes, and conversion pixel verification in GA4. We don't launch until tracking is confirmed working, because data from day one is the only way to optimize from day two.
4. Step 4: Ongoing Optimization. Weekly performance reviews cover creative rotation (fighting fatigue before it shows up in engagement data), bid adjustments by audience segment and placement performance, audience pruning based on engagement signals, frequency cap refinement, and attribution reporting against the goals set in Step 1. For Portland-area businesses especially, geographic layering lets us zero in on audiences in the metro while also scaling reach across the Pacific Northwest when a campaign calls for it. Programmatic without active management is money wasted.

This is what full-service digital advertising actually looks like in practice: not just buying impressions, but building a system that earns results and improves every week. If you want to see what that looks like for a specific business, our client work covers a range of industries and campaign types.

Creative That Actually Works in Programmatic: Formats, Sizes, and Best Practices

Targeting can get you in front of the right person. Creative is what makes them pay attention. This is the part of programmatic that's easiest to neglect and most consequential to results.

Programmatic ad formats and the IAB standard sizes you need to cover:

• Display banners: The workhorses of programmatic. IAB standard sizes include 300x250 (medium rectangle, the most widely served), 728x90 (leaderboard), 160x600 (wide skyscraper), and 300x600 (half page, the highest-impact standard unit). Cover all four from launch.
• HTML5 animated display: Motion catches the eye in a way static banners can't. HTML5 allows looping animations without the file size penalties of older formats. Still needs to communicate the message without sound.
• Native ads: Ads that match the look and feel of editorial content on the host page. Native outperforms traditional display on engagement metrics because it doesn't look like an ad at first glance. Best for brand awareness and content promotion.
• Pre-roll and mid-roll video: Video served before or during other video content. 6-second non-skippable bumpers are most effective for pure brand awareness; 15-second non-skippable units give enough time to tell a simple story. Both require the brand message to land in the first two seconds.
• Connected TV (CTV) and OTT: Video ads served to smart TVs and streaming apps (think Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto TV, and thousands of others). CTV is the fastest-growing programmatic format heading into 2025 and 2026, driven by the continued shift of viewing time from linear TV to streaming. Non-skippable, high completion rates, and increasingly measurable.
• Audio programmatic: Ads served in streaming environments including Spotify, podcast networks, and streaming radio. Often underused, with less competition and strong completion rates for well-produced spots.

Creative best practices that apply across all formats:

1. Lead with your logo or brand mark in the first two seconds of any video or animated unit. Brand recall drops sharply when the brand ID appears late.
2. Design for a no-sound environment. More than 85% of display video plays without sound. Every visual should be able to communicate the message independently of audio.
3. Keep display ad copy to 5 to 7 words maximum. Programmatic display is viewed for an average of less than two seconds. Complexity is the enemy of recall.
4. A/B test at least two distinct creative concepts per audience segment from day one. Never launch with a single creative and assume it will work. Let performance data tell you what resonates.
5. Refresh creative every four to six weeks. Ad fatigue is measurable, engagement drops, frequency rises, CTR falls. A fresh creative rotation resets the audience's attention.

If your creative assets aren't up to the job, even the best programmatic targeting won't save the campaign. That's why our Portland video production team works hand-in-hand with our advertising strategists. The brief, the formats, the messaging hierarchy, all of that is defined before the camera turns on, so the assets that come out of production are purpose-built for the channel they're going into.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the questions we hear most often from Portland businesses exploring programmatic advertising for the first time.

What is programmatic advertising and how does it work?

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory using software, data, and real-time auctions. When a user loads a webpage, an auction happens in milliseconds: advertisers bid for the right to show that user an ad based on their audience data and targeting parameters. The highest (or most relevant, depending on auction type) bidder wins and their ad renders on the page, all before the page finishes loading. This replaces the old model of manually negotiating ad placements directly with individual publishers, making the process faster, more precise, and more measurable.

How is programmatic advertising different from Google Ads?

Google Ads, specifically Search, captures existing demand: people who are actively searching for something right now. Programmatic advertising reaches people based on who they are and how they behave, using demand-side platform technology and behavioral targeting to find audiences across virtually the entire open web, not just within Google's ecosystem. Google's Display Network is technically one slice of the programmatic universe, but it's far from the whole picture. For most advertisers, Google Ads and programmatic advertising are genuinely complementary: one captures intent that already exists, the other builds intent before someone starts searching. Running both together creates a full-funnel coverage that either channel alone can't provide.

How much does programmatic advertising cost?

Programmatic is typically priced on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Rates can range from $1 to $2 CPM for broad open-web inventory to $20 or more CPM for premium placements, connected TV, or highly targeted niche audiences. As a practical guide, most meaningful programmatic campaigns require a minimum media spend of $2,000 to $5,000 per month to generate enough impression and click data to optimize effectively. Below that threshold, the learning period stretches too long and optimization decisions lack statistical confidence. Agency management fees are separate from media spend. The key question isn't how cheaply you can buy impressions, it's whether you're reaching the right people and converting them into customers. Sproutbox builds transparent budget structures so clients always know exactly where their media dollars are going and what they're buying.

Is programmatic advertising good for small businesses?

Honest answer: programmatic can work very well for small businesses, but it's not always the right starting point. If a small business is still figuring out its audience, its offer, or what creative converts, it's almost always better to start with Google Ads where intent is explicit and budgets can start small. Once the fundamentals are validated, you know your customer, you have proven messaging, and you want to grow reach beyond search and social, programmatic becomes a powerful tool for owning awareness in a specific market. Geographic targeting makes programmatic genuinely viable for local Portland and Pacific Northwest businesses who want to build brand presence in their metro without needing a national-scale budget. Contextual targeting means you don't have to depend on tracked data to reach the right audience. We've helped businesses of all sizes figure out when programmatic makes sense, and when it doesn't. That honest conversation is a core part of how we work.

What is a demand-side platform (DSP) and do I need one?

A demand-side platform (DSP) is the software advertisers or their agencies use to buy programmatic ad inventory across multiple ad exchanges from a single interface. It's the technology layer that lets you set targeting parameters, manage bids, traffick creative, and analyze performance data all in one place. Well-known DSPs include The Trade Desk, Google's DV360, and Amazon DSP, each with different strengths in terms of inventory access, data integrations, and reporting capabilities. As a business owner, you don't need to operate a DSP yourself, your agency does that on your behalf. What you do need is an agency that knows how to configure it properly, because a poorly set-up DSP campaign can drain budget quickly without generating meaningful results. The DSP is a precision instrument; in the wrong hands, it's an expensive one.

Conclusion

Programmatic advertising isn't magic. It's precision. The technology is genuinely powerful, real-time bidding, audience architecture, cross-screen delivery, and view-through attribution represent a real step forward in how advertising works. But the results come from the strategy, the targeting architecture, the creative quality, and the ongoing optimization behind it. The technology is just the infrastructure.

Businesses that treat programmatic as a set-it-and-forget-it channel waste money. Businesses that treat it as a managed, data-driven discipline use it to build a real competitive advantage, reaching the right people at every stage of the funnel, across every screen, at every touchpoint the open web offers. That second group is where we want our clients to land.

If you're curious whether programmatic belongs in your marketing mix, or how it could work alongside what you're already running, we'd love to talk it through. And if you want to explore what a fully managed programmatic program looks like in practice, see how Sproutbox runs programmatic campaigns.