We are being guided through technology in almost all spheres of life today. Be it entertainment, travel, food, shopping or education, we are being supported with high-end technology everywhere to make our life easier and faster. In the advertising field too, programmatic advertising has made it easier for advertisers and brands to buy or sell ad spaces easily and at affordable rates.
To get complete understand of how programmatic advertising works, let’s first understand, what is programmatic advertising?
Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising works on digital formulation instead of the traditional manual buying and selling of advertising space. In programmatic advertising, through the use of data insights and algorithms, the ad space is made available to the right users at the right time at affordable pricing. Through programmatic advertising, the process of buying and selling ad space becomes hassle free as well as transparent. The technology is used to sell and buy ad spaces in digital media outlets such as websites, apps, digital out-of–home screens etc.
Programmatic advertising involves programmatic media buying.
Programmatic media buying is the process involved in buying an ad space online. This can be done in three different ways:
- RTB- Real-Time-Bidding
As the name suggest, this ad space buying involves real-time bidding by users to get the ad space they wish for. Here, the ad space is sold or bought through an auction open for all publishers and advertisers. This type of media buying is best suited for ad space that address mass audience such as digital outdoor screens at airports.
- Private Marketplace or PMP
Here, the bidding takes more privately as opposed to RTB. The bidding is through auction but the participation is on ‘invitation-basis’ only. The selected advertisers have the access to participate in PMP auctions.
- Programmatic Direct: It is the media buying process where the publisher does not holds any auction for selling space rather it sells the advertising space to one or multiple advertisers at fixed prices.
Other important aspects of Programmatic media buying
- SSP (Supply-side-platform or Sell-side platform): Supply-side platform refers to the software that lets the publishers manage their ad inventories in real time. The publishers, out-of-home media owners and other digital platforms supply their ad space to potential buyers.
- DSP (Demand-side-platform): It is the platform where the ad inventory is offered on demand by advertisers or publishers. For example: digital ad on mobile apps, in-stream video ads etc. Through real-time bidding the ad inventories or ad space is sold to the potential buyers.
- AD-Exchanger: It acts as a digital marketplace where both publishers as well as advertisers can trade ad space. They can connect here to sell and buy digital advertising space through real time auctioning. This virtual market place act as a middle platform where the SSP fill in the ad inventory in the ad-exchanger and the DSP platforms connect to the ad-exchanger to further sell or buy the ad space.
What is the importance of programmatic media buying?
- Automated media buying is quicker, efficient and accurate.
- The whole system of ad space selling and buying become transparent through programmatic media buying process.
- The advertisers can target right audience in real time to gain maximum benefit out of their ad campaign.