Dynamic Budget Allocation: Put All Your Eggs In Many Baskets
What Are Fluid Budgets
In today’s programmatic advertising landscape, Levy Online offers a performance-optimal way to leverage multiple Ad Platform’s inventories. “Budget Fluidity,” or “Dynamic Budget Allocation,” offers a transformative approach to ad spending. Instead of locking budgets to specific platforms, Budget Fluidity allocates advertising funds in real-time across multiple types of ad inventory.
This includes popular platforms and advertising networks like Hulu Ads, Paramount Ads, Disney+ Ads, NBC, ESPN, CBS, and many others. With Budget Fluidity, advertisers gain the flexibility to distribute their budget efficiently based on live data, delivering ads when a relevant audience is active and when inventory pricing aligns with campaign goals.
What do we mean by many baskets? We mean instead of committing budgets to individual inventories, commit budget instead to specific strategies that include a multitude of inventories. Let you audience dictate where your budget is spent, based on where your best audience happens to be viewing relevant (and cost-effective) content.
Real-Time Allocation vs. Platform Commitment
A key aspect of Budget Fluidity is its adaptability. Rather than committing to specific ad platforms and locking portions of the budget with individual services, this approach allows real-time allocation across a wide range of networks and platforms.
In a traditional model, advertisers who work with individual ad platforms or inventories might need separate budget commitments for each. This means having a budget commitment on Hulu Ads, another one on ESPN, another on each other major ad platform. Each platform may have its own benefits, but also carries with it its own ad management requirements and budget – and budget given to one ad platform is not as simple to move to other platforms, or may be downright impossible based on minimums. This direct commitment restricts budget flexibility and can limit a campaign’s reach if the target audience shifts away from the selected platforms.
Performance-Driven Budget Allocation
With our fluid budgets, adjustments happen dynamically, in line with where the audience is and how content consumption changes.
By allocating resources based on current performance, campaigns can optimize ad spend based on where the best-performing audiences are. This ensures that high-performing inventories across platforms receive more resources while limiting investment in areas yielding lower returns. As performance metrics shift, so does the budget, providing continuous optimization to maintain cost-effectiveness and impact.
With our advertising technology stack, this occurs in real-time. After all, we’re placing ads for the most desirable individuals and households to receive ads – we’re not placing ads just because it’s Hulu, Fox or ESPN, for example. That’s just where the audience happens to be. Inventory is a means to reach an audience, we want to ad dollars to be freely available across platforms and inventory, wherever the target audience happens to be the most cost-effective.
Access to Inventory Without Budget Tied-Up In Platforms
A major advantage of programmatic media with Levy Online is the accessibility of the full inventory spectrum— display banners, native advertising, audio ads, streaming video platforms, networks, and content providers—all are still accessible without being bound by direct agreements with each platform.
Advertisers can reach audiences across various channels and networks through a single budget, managed programmatically. This consolidated approach provides greater control and agility, letting the budget follow the audience wherever they go, without being locked to any particular service.
We already place ads (millions and millions and millions of ads, daily) across these inventories. There’s no need to work directly with an ad platform when you have a marketing partner with the buying power of Levy Online. Instead of working with individual platforms, we already have direct access to that inventory or can provide a negotiated rate. Regardless, our methodology still serves on that inventory but budget is placed because the targeted audience is there. It’s not locked in.
Example of Platform Direct vs Fluid Budget Allocation
Direct Buy
You open a Hulu Ads account, commit budget to Hulu Ads including any minimums, and run a campaign on Hulu that is not aware of any other strategies you run. Budget is locked in here.
You open a Paramount Ads account, commit budget to Paramount Ads including any minimums, and run a campaign on Paramount that is not aware of any other strategies you run. Budget is locked in here.
Fixed budgets that are immovable between inventories. These budgets are committed and inflexible.
Fluid Budget Allocation
Hulu inventory is available to Levy Online as part of our overall media plan. Ads place on Hulu inventory without any specific Hulu budget being required. Ads only serve when targeted individuals are viewing Hulu content.
Likewise if that targeted individual views content on Paramount, they are targetable there. Ads where place where the best cost to value ratio is predicted. The value of an impression is recalculated for each impression.
Budget fluidity means there is not a rigid budget commitment to a particular inventory type. Budget can move dynamically.
Fluid Budgets Are An Easy Choice
In summary, Budget Fluidity enables advertisers to access a wide range of ad inventory and adjust spend allocation in real time, optimizing campaigns based on real-world performance metrics.
Rather than being limited by individual platform commitments, this flexibility ensures ad dollars go where they’re most effective. This dynamic approach to budget allocation maximizes reach, optimizes performance, and leverages the full potential of programmatic advertising.