DesCK^® Programmatic Media Buying.

The future isn’t programmatic. Programmatic is the present.

Automation and data have fundamentally changed the way we plan, buy, and measure media. At Cramer-Krasselt, we insist on a data-driven approach to media – and that’s why we’ve gone all in on programmatic – but very differently from the standard approach.

Why? Because the programmatic landscape has its challenges. It is anything but formulaic. And outsourcing programmatic, like many agencies do, is risky.

So, we created our own proprietary programmatic media buying platform. We call it DesCK – Programmatic Media Buying.

DesCK is built upon five founding principles:

Agents (Not Principals). Most media only agencies act as principals – accumulating inventory for re-sale and distribution into clients’ media plans. That’s a self-serving bias. C-K acts as agent for our clients, which always puts our clients’ interests and our fiduciary responsibilities front and center. We mine, test, learn and optimize the massive inventory of the Internet, constantly. Another reason why using one DSP is just not enough. We use five.

Unique, Multi-DSP Testing Platform. That’s a big, big C-K difference because being tied to one demand side platform (DSP) makes absolutely no sense.  Programmatic technology is dynamic. There is no constant, because technology and algorithm sophistication changes continually and quickly. Unlike most media agency programmatic offerings, DesCK was intentionally built with, and for, multiple best-in-class DSP platforms rather than the industry standard of one DSP. It allows us to continually test them against one another for absolute optimization and change them out if they fall behind and under-perform. That’s a huge advantage. It allows our trading team to seamlessly shift dollars across platforms, always chasing the best possible performance for our clients.

Transparency. As a result, we operate in a responsibly disclosed manner with our clients. Our clients know as much as they need to about their buy to make all of the right decisions. Pricing isn’t our only focus for transparency either. DesCK also allows our traders (and you) to have a transparent view into the inventory we’re purchasing, and the optimization decisions driving performance.

Data. Information is fundamental to programmatic, so we invested in and created a fully integrated Data Management Platform (DMP) from the beginning. Our data management platform is the engine behind DesCK, and facilitates our data-driven decision-making, all in real-time.

Interlocking teams. Our team of traders work closely with our media planners to leverage programmatic strategically for our clients; that is not the case at most media agencies. At C-K, it’s yet another part of the connected-thinking culture of the agency.