5 Reasons to Leverage Programmatic Advertising for Recruitment

The pandemic has had a considerable impact on employment across industries. With the world adapting to a new normal, we’re seeing an increase in job searches and talent acquisition is becoming more challenging. With such a large candidate pool and a competitive job market, hiring managers are turning to agencies to run programmatic ad campaigns to support their search for exceptional talent. 

Below, we’re covering what programmatic advertising for recruitment is, and the benefits of leveraging it as part of your talent acquisition strategy.

How Does Programmatic Advertising Work for Recruitment

Programmatic advertising enables media buyers to purchase advertising space using a demand-side platform (DSP) that leverages data insights and algorithms to reach the right users. This automatic process serves ads at the right time, and at the right price. Modern marketers are using a multi-channel programmatic advertising strategy that leverages native, display, audio, video, and connected TV (CTV). 

With programmatic recruitment advertising, organizations can deliver ads to potential candidates across a variety of digital channels. For example, a multi-channel strategy makes it possible to advertise across a mix of channels, which increases the percentage of the total target audience that a campaign can reach. You can capture the attention and interest of a candidate, and leverage a call to action (CTA) that encourages them to apply for a role at your organization.

When using programmatic advertising for recruitment, you can also explore various strategies for fine-tuning campaign results. This approach helps you to craft a brand story throughout the entire customer journey.

Benefits of Recruitment Advertising

Leveraging programmatic advertising for talent acquisition makes the job of recruiters much simpler. In fact, companies that use programmatic are twice as likely to reduce their overall hiring time. Here are 5 key benefits of recruitment advertising. 

Programmatic Recruitment Optimizes the Job Ad Process

Programmatic advertising for recruitment optimizes the job ad process because it provides you an opportunity to control what audience will see your ads across the web. You’re able to use targeting to reach qualified candidates with precision, and you can use automated bidding processes to avoid overspending on clicks that don’t result in conversion.

Because programmatic campaigns run across many digital channels and platforms, the internet essentially becomes your job board. This expands the reach of your campaigns, and enables you to reach candidates who are the right fit for any role you’re aiming to fill. 

Supports Organizations With Complex Hiring Needs 

For employers with complex hiring needs, using programmatic ads for their recruitment efforts helps eliminate many inefficient processes and unnecessary spending. Sophisticated targeting capabilities means that your ad spend isn’t wasted on candidates who are not suited for the role. 

You also have the  ability to track campaign metrics that are most important to you. Metrics can be pulled from campaign results, and then used to help you narrow down who, when, and where to target in your future campaigns. 

For example, you might see that a campaign which highlights one specific employee value proposition results in more qualified candidates than another. This tells you what your desired candidates are looking for in their employer, which is information you can leverage to attract the right people.  

Programmatic Recruitment Targets Ideal Candidates

We’ve touched on targeting above, but let’s dig into some specific strategies for targeting with programmatic. 

• CRM direct upload supports simple and fast uploading of CRM data directly into your DSP. From there, you can retarget candidates who have expressed interest in your organization or open roles. 
• Geotargeting and geofencing makes it possible to deliver ads using the geographic location information of users. You can target by country, state, province, city, or zip code/postal code. For companies that are growing globally, geotargeting can help them reach the right candidates in new geos/markets.  
• Lookalike audiences enable you to reach potential candidates who exhibit similar interests and behaviours with your existing talent, or existing CRM list. 
• Contextual targeting enables you to target niche phrases that are related to your field or organization, or to the skills of your target audience. This targeting methodology reaches users when they are in a receptive frame of mind.

Precision-based targeting enables you to narrow down your targeting pool to reach specific professions, employers, geos, and more. This is a major benefit of using programmatic advertising for recruitment because it reduces wasted ad spend, and improves the quality of the candidates you reach. 

Programmatic Creates Opportunity to Re-Engage Qualified Candidates

For recruiters, pairing a multi-channel campaign with retargeting is the perfect solution for re-engaging qualified candidates. With multi-channel targeting, you can reach users across different platforms and devices. This strategy helps you create a cohesive message across all channels, and gain greater reach by capturing users who are only using some of them. 

Combining retargeting with your multi-channel campaign helps to re-engage candidates who have seen one of your ads before, or shown interest in your company or organization. Seeing your ads across devices and in various formats builds campaign awareness, gaining more attention of ideal talent, and encouraging them to apply to a role. 

Programmatic Campaigns Will Strengthen Your Employer Brand

A major benefit of programmatic advertising for recruitment is that they bring employer brand awareness to your organization. A campaign is an opportunity to communicate to candidates your employee value proposition—the unique set of benefits that an employee receives in return for the skills, capabilities, and experience that they bring to a company. 

The ad impressions that your campaign earns translates to candidates who, if they don’t apply to a role at your organization right away, may do so in the future. Creating employer brand awareness is a long-term investment that builds trust with potential candidates. If they’re familiar with your organization already, they’ll be more receptive to future outreach. 

Make Programmatic Part of Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

In a competitive recruitment landscape, programmatic recruitment advertising gives you an opportunity to use precision-based targeting to reach qualified candidates across the digital channels that they are actively using. With the added benefit of growing awareness around your employer brand, programmatic is a tactic that recruiters should be using to find fresh talent in the current competitive market.

Want to run exceptional programmatic campaigns? Request a demo to learn more about StackAdapt.