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Lessons from TA tech: Embracing the Programmatic Future
Posted by NAS Recruitment Innovation on June 12th, 2019 
Courtney Compton, NAS MediaPro Strategist and Erin Duffy, NAS Account Director attended last week’s TAtech Leadership Summit in Boston. Sponsored by Appcast, the TAtech Leadership Summit is the only conference focused solely on the application of programmatic technology in recruitment advertising. Here are Courtney’s and Erin’s insights from the Summit.
Initial Impressions
Courtney: This was my first time at TAtech’s Leadership Summit on Programmatic Ad Buying. I found the summit to be a great learning experience. The welcome reception at Fenway Park was a really fun time. It provided an opportunity to meet people I have only spoken with via phone or email. Throughout the summit, I had the opportunity to network with colleagues in the recruitment media industry.
Erin: It was also my first time at TAtech. Seeing some of the vendors you talk with over email or on the phone every day/week was a great experience. All came forward with promise of advancements in their own platforms or intentions of looking to improve their relationships with us for a better experience for our clients. Programmatic is still new to the industry and it was encouraging to see it evolving from all sides (ATS, programmatic vendors, media and other agencies).
Hot Topics
Courtney: Some of the topics most discussed were the future of job boards, new technologies, applicant tracking systems, jobseeker behavior, when to use programmatic, ad buying decisions and data analysis to help make smarter ad buying choices.
Erin: Matt Plummer, VP of Zip Recruiter, talked about some of the main reasons to use programmatic ad buying. The first reason to buy is unified reporting. This is something programmatic does very well. Next is the ability to implement start-and-stop spend rules, although he discussed some potential improvements that could take place in this area. Finally, programmatic is great at providing flexibility in budget allocations. Matt believes that low CPAs should indicate budget allocation, because it means that the publishers are performing optimally.
Courtney: In several sessions, the speakers talked about the importance of distinguishing your applicant need. Are you looking for volume and high traffic, or are you looking for a more qualified applicant? Many times, clients ask for both, but being able to thoughtfully qualify your need for a specific job category could help our publishers perform better and produce the proper results for our clients.
Courtney and Erin at Fenway Park during the TAtech welcome reception.Data Drivers
Courtney: We can really gain a lot of insight from looking not only at the data from programmatic, but also at the hire data within our client’s ATS and aligning these insights to make smarter choices with respect to ad buying. I found the 2019 Recruitment Media Benchmark Report presented by Paige Calisi, Chief Data Analyst of Appcast, to be very insightful. Clicks on mobile devices increased by 24.48% and applies increased by 54.93%. It stresses the importance of being mobile friendly.
Erin: This report also found job ads with shorter titles had higher apply rates. Titles of one to three words had the highest rate of 5.5%. While shorter titles typically perform better in most scenarios, it sometimes helps to be more descriptive. For RNs, for example, including the specialty such as OR can be beneficial to jobseekers.
Challenges Ahead
Erin: Much of the discussion was around the challenge of finding a middle ground for programmatic vendors, ATSs, media vendors and clients. TAtech created an open space to speak candidly about each perspective.
With publishers, we need to ensure that we are setting expectations for our clients and using the tool properly to help them perform optimally. From the ATS perspective, a large challenge is being on the same page as the programmatic vendor so that tracking data can match. Are we firing in the same place? How are you tracking clicks and applies? For agencies like us, we’re all about looking in the right places to find value in the applicants applying to jobs and the cost to do that. Across every segment, we are anticipating track-to-hire data, which will be the next wave of innovation in programmatic ad buying.
Final Thoughts
Erin: Fred Goff, CEO of JobCase, made some interesting points at the end of the summit stressing the importance of being aware of the language we use when recruiting. He recommended staying away from saying someone isn’t a quality candidate and realizing they just weren’t the right fit for your job. We should always consider someone’s values while recruiting, beyond just their credentials. This is a great reminder that at the end of the day we are all people and we should be looking at the bigger picture.
Courtney: In his keynote, Chris Anderson, a professor at Cornell, took us back to the travel classifieds business. He shared a video from a news station interviewing the founder of Priceline, as well as travel agents who said they were not concerned about it. Later, we were asked if we thought that we would be featured in a similar news segment 20 years from now. This was an “aha moment” for all of us. As technologies advance, job seekers’ behavior advances. It is so important for recruitment media to stay current and move forward. NAS is evolving our technologies, like NAS MediaPro, to work for our clients and job seekers.
Learn more about programmatic advertising.
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