Was dead set against programmatic display ads for local clients... until I saw the numbers from a Dunkin Donuts campaign

For years I told small biz owners to avoid programmatic like the plague. Thought it was just big brand nonsense. Then last fall I helped a local Dunkin franchisee in Boston test a $500 campaign targeting people within 2 miles of the store during morning rush. They got 12,000 impressions and a 4% click rate. Week over week foot traffic was up 18%. My jaw dropped. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized you were straight up wrong about a whole channel?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyatt1351mo ago

Yeah but was the click rate legit or just bots? I've seen programmatic where 90% of clicks are garbage. Low quality traffic that never converts. Dunkin is a national brand though not a true local small biz. The real test is a mom and pop shop with a $200 budget. I'd need to see the actual in-store redemption data not just foot traffic numbers. Programmatic can work but the fraud problem is still massive for smaller players.

samk771mo ago

90% of clicks are garbage" - yeah, that sounds about right for most programmatic I've seen too. It's kind of like buying a lottery ticket where you know the odds are rigged but you still hope for the best... @wyatt135 you nailed it with the mom and pop test though. A real test would be like a pizza place spending $200 and counting actual slices sold, not just "foot traffic." But hey, at least Dunkin can afford to burn cash on bot clicks while my local bagel shop can't even get a decent roi on a Facebook ad. Guess that's the price of playing with the big boys, right?

kai_webb9117d ago

The real issue nobody's talking about is how these programmatic buys actually make local small biz look bad when they fail, and then the platforms use that as a reason to jack up CPCs for everyone else. @wyatt135 you're absolutely right that a mom and pop shop with $200 is the canary in the coal mine here. But here's the thing I've noticed - the big brands like Dunkin might be burning cash, but theyre also the ones feeding the bot farms because they dont care about fraud as long as the dashboard looks good to their bosses. That just makes the whole system worse for the little guys who actually need every click to count.