Programmatic Advertising

This term which is common today but has taken birth 15 years back with a promise to be the future of advertising on web which is now being proven true.

Now the question arise what is programmatic advertising? So, in a very layman term programmatic advertising is the method of buying advertising space which the use of automated technology instead of that same traditional method. This feature keeps developing every time technology develops creating more exposure and opportunities for marketers to engage their target customers.

Programmatic advertising has topped global spending in2020 $129 billion, biggest spender being the USA followed by UK and China. Programmatic advertising completely rely on an algorithm that will determine where the company’s advertisement money is best spent. This will not only be responsible for the launch of campaign but will also monitor the ad spending to look for the areas of improvement.

Programmatic advertising offers a data driven alternative, where algorithm software handles the sales and placement of digital advertisement in millisecond and can be applied to a wide range of channels and formats.

There are a lot of tools and services which one can include depending on one’s specific needs. Let’s have a look at some of them:

  1. DSP – It stands for demand side platform and is a type of software that allows an advertiser to buy advertisement with the help of automation. It allows buyers to target audiences based on data such as website category, physical location, age, online behavior etc. There are two stages to how to demand side platform works. First the advertiser uploads creative, sets up targeting and puts down a budget for their campaign. After the campaign creative is uploaded, the DSP scours through its network of publishers for sites and mobile apps that completes the criteria of the advertiser and make a bid for placement. After all this the DSP resolves the bid ,places the advertisement and manages payment.
  • SSP- It stands for supply side platforms which was previously known as RTB(Real time bidding) but the SSP in today’s time not only allow publishers to sell their inventory to the best advertisement but also a key part of RTB process because they allow publishers to optimize yield by simultaneously connecting their inventory to multiple advertisement exchanges and demand side platforms. SSP’s are one of the main players in the online advertising ecosystem and play a key role in RTB media transaction.
  • DMP- It stands for Data management platforms and is a unifying platform to collect, organize and activate different party audience data from any source like online and offline. It helps business get unique insights into their customer. It connects many platforms in a neutral way so marketers can use their powerful audience data when and wherever. Any professional or businessman from any industry around the globe can be benefited from DMP if correctly utilized. The basic business for DMP is broadly categorized in three groups:

Publishers (The one owns or manages the website), Marketers, Agencies. Most important things for which DMP is important are: Audience targeting and targeted advertising, TV DMP, Audience enrichment, paid search, Paid social etc.

  • Advertisement Exchange- An ad exchange is basically a marketplace, but not a physical marketplace and it allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space mostly through real time auction. Anyone and everyone can buy from an advertisement exchange provided the ad exchange allows it.

Now the question might arise is ad exchange and SSP the same thing?

Not really the technologies are similar but the purpose is different for both.

Ad exchanges aggregate impressions, SSPs are used by publishers to aggregate exchanges.