Companies are constantly innovating on ways to reach candidates more effectively – and technologies like programmatic job advertising have made it easier (and more cost-effective) than ever before.
Before digital recruitment, a newspaper ad was about as effective as hiring could get. Once technology entered the picture, however, candidate pools that were previously out of reach opened up entirely. At first, this was through online job boards, then social and professional networks, and now programmatic job advertising platforms that automate ad placement at scale and use AI to optimise spend across a vast network of job advertisements.
If you’re keen on technology but aren’t sure about taking the leap toward programmatic job advertising, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll briefly explain the technology and outline the advantages of including it in your recruitment marketing stack.
To do so, we’ll discuss:
What is Programmatic Job Advertising?
Programmatic job advertising – or programmatic recruitment advertising – uses a combination of data and technology to help employers distribute their digital job ads to reach the right candidates, wherever they might be. It automates the buying, placing, and optimisation of job ads using AI and real-time data to replace the traditional and often ineffective approach of manual recruitment advertising.
How Does Programmatic Recruitment Advertising Work?
Programmatic recruiting solutions rely on four key components: budget allocation, audience targeting, live optimisation, and performance monitoring.
- Budget allocation: You specify the total budget for your campaign, which the programmatic job advertising software then takes and uses to automatically share your job ads across the most suitable channels.
- Audience targeting: Built on thousands of historical data points, the AI algorithms powering programmatic recruitment advertising pinpoint the ideal candidate profile for each role and determine which platforms and channels are most likely to reach them.
- Live optimisation: Once your job ads are live, the programmatic recruitment advertising platform makes real-times adjustments based on live data. If one job board is bringing in strong applications while another one isn’t, spend is automatically redirected without manual input.
- Performance monitoring: A centralised dashboard typically native to programmatic recruitment solutions provides full visibility into how your campaigns perform so you can always see what’s working.
The 10 Benefits of Programmatic Job Advertising in Recruitment Marketing
Last year, 56% of companies planned to increase their investment in programmatic recruitment advertising – and for good reason. Programmatic job advertising provides 10 major benefits that recruiters simply can’t reap with traditional approaches to job advertising.
These benefits include:
- Budget goes to ads that actually work
- Free recruiters from repetitive admin
- Reach candidates before they’re even looking
- Fill vacancies in record time
- Spot wasted spend before it drains your budget
- Move your budget where it’s needed – fast
- Attract a higher volume of better-fit candidates
- See what’s happening across your hiring funnel
- Meet hiring needs at scale
- Reduce reliance on any single job board
1. Budget Goes to Ads That Actually Work
Programmatic technologies funnel your budget to channels that perform best (and away from those that don’t deliver) by automatically shifting spend in real time. This means they make ongoing adjustments based on data that rolls in, while accounting for seasonal shifts in demand, application trends, and fluctuations in job board pricing.
With cost-per-click rising by 27% in 2024 alone, this is one of the most important benefits for, as it makes sticking to recruitment budgets and managing costs easier than ever.
2. Free Recruiters From Repetitive Admin
Manually posting each individual advert across every single job channel sucks up a lot of recruiter time – on average about 10 hours per week. That’s 40 hours a month spent on logging into individual job boards, crafting and publishing ads to fit each channel’s requirements, keeping up with performance on separate dashboards, and manually adjusting budgets periodically.
When replacing manual job advertising work with a programmatic solution, you only have to do this once in a dashboard that acts as an automated, one-stop-shop for all your recruitment job advertising needs.
3. Reach Candidates Before They’re Even Looking
Programmatic advertising solutions can help you grab the attention of all qualified candidates, even if they aren’t actively looking for a job to begin with. This is because they don’t limit distribution to just job boards. Their reach covers every channel where great candidates – both active and passive – live, from social media to across the wider web.
4. Fill Vacancies in Record Time
If a job vacancy costs $98 per day and US-based hiring takes an average of 45 days, then companies lose around $4410 per month just waiting to hire. Not only that, but existing employees have to work harder to fill the missing gaps, resulting in bottlenecks and potential burnout. Programmatic job advertising shortens the time-to-fill (and hence avoids those extra costs) by:
- Reducing the time it takes to write, edit, and publish job adverts
- Automating job ad distribution to multiple best fit channels
- Targeting higher quality active and passive candidates
5. Spot Wasted Spend Before it Drains Your Budget
Programmatic job advertising solutions bring data from all your recruitment channels in a single dashboard, showing you which channels are delivering results for which positions, industries, or markets (and which ones aren’t.)
The best part? As soon as a channel starts underperforming, your budget shifts hands-free to reflect that, meaning you get full visibility into where your money is going, without having to be the one manually moving it around. This is why over 50% of companies using programmatic recruitment advertising solutions see a decrease in the cost of candidate acquisition, reducing wasted recruitment budgets.
6. Move Your Budget Where It’s Needed – Fast
When a role is suddenly urgently prioritised, you can’t sit around and wait. You must act quick – and programmatic can be the sidekick that does just that. It lets you shift spend toward hard-to-fill or high-priority positions instantly, without the heavy lifting of renegotiating contracts with job boards, logging into multiple job boards, or adjusting ads on each channel one by one.
7. Attract a Higher Volume of Better-Fit Candidates
Programmatic recruitment advertising, powered by AI algorithms, are solutions built on thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of past data points. And they’re continuously optimised with each new hire. The algorithm learns which channels, times, and audiences produce the strongest applicants for each role, later automatically prioritising those for future similar roles.
This means the longer you use the programmatic solution, the better it gets at finding the right people – and studies support this. Aptitude Research found that companies using programmatic recruitment advertising are almost three times as likely to improve quality of hire compared to those reliant on traditional advertising methods.
Programmatic worked for Ferrero Group What Could It Do For You?
Hirematic’s programmatic recruitment advertising platform helped the Italian multinational hire 40 various roles per month — on time and under budget.
8. See What’s Happening Across Your Hiring Funnel
We’ve already established that programmatic job advertising gives you a breakdown of your recruitment spend. But it also takes it a step further with stage-by-stage visibility into your hiring funnel. That means you can see exactly where candidates drop off, which means you aren’t left guessing.
9. Meet Hiring Needs at Scale
Traditional job posting might’ve been enough when hiring demands were predictable and limited in scale, but they struggle to meet high-volume hiring needs. Programmatic recruitment advertising solutions strip the complexities of hiring at scale away, handling the manual, logistic, and data-driven to-do’s automatically, without requiring you to increase recruiter headcount to meet the higher workload.
10. Reduce Reliance on Any Single Job Board
Depending too heavily on one job board is a risk most recruiters don’t actively think about, yet most take out of habit. And the consequences of doing so aren’t obvious until it’s too late, when performance takes a plunge, costs spiral out of control, or you find yourself wasting time on a stream of unfit candidates.
Programmatic job advertising reduces this risk by spreading spend across multiple viable channels at the same time, maximising hiring outcomes by shifting budget outcomes where results actually pour in.
Unsure if Programmatic Job Advertising is Right for You?
Despite the numerous benefits of programmatic recruitment advertising, many companies are still hesitant to take the leap toward it. Here are some of the most common concerns we’re hearing from companies that are on the edge – and how our programmatic job advertising solution, Hirematic, helps overcome them:
“I don’t want to lose control of my recruitment budget.”
The Hirematic dashboard gives users total control over their recruitment spend – you can start or stop spending on a campaign or advertisement at any time.“I’m not sure this will work with my existing system.”
Hirematic’s programmatic recruitment platform integrates easily with all major Applicant Tracking Systems. If we don’t already have an integration for your ATS, we’ll build one.“I don’t have time to learn how to use a new system.”
Because Hirematic technology works in sync with your ATS, there is no need to learn new processes. You can still create and post job ads and receive applications directly through your existing system.“I’m not sure I’ll find enough qualified candidates this way.”
Hirematic’s network of partners includes a vast range of recruitment channels, so your ads will always reach as many (or more) candidates as they did before – you’ll just be doing less work.“We’re already locked into contracts with our current job boards.”
Hirematic works alongside your existing job board contracts rather than against them. Through our extensive network of job board partnerships, we can fold your current commitments directly into the Hirematic platform. This way, nothing goes to waste and you can start benefiting from programmatic advertising without waiting for contracts to expire.“We’re not hiring at high enough volume to make this worth it.”
Programmatic job advertising isn’t just a tool for high-volume hiring teams. It’s just as much about spending smarter as it is about scaling up. Even if you’re only filling a handful of roles at a time, every amount spent on underperforming job boards is money that could be working harder elsewhere – something Hirematic’s AI makes sure of.Still have questions? Want to see how it works for yourself? No problem. Contact the experts at Hirematic today to get more information or book a demo of our programmatic job advertising platform.
