ADSERVING VS ADTRACKING

In today’s day and age when social media and online digital consumption has taken the entire world by the storm. People pursuing their career in digital marketing definitely needs to understand the technology of Ad-Serving and Ad-Tracking. Let’s deep-dive into the concept of both the technologies, whey they are used, what is their significance and what are their pros and cons.

The main channel of digital marketing between the client/agency and the publishers are Ad-Servers. Ad-Servers are engines or technologies which manages creatives, optimizes the campaign and reports the on-going activity to the clients or the agencies. Ad-Serving: When the creatives are managed and hosted in the Ad-Server which you own, it should be an Ad-Serving creative or property for you. Ad-Tracking: When the creatives are hosted or managed in third-party Ad-Server then the property or the Ad should be Ad-Tracking for you.

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Let us jump into the difference between the two in tabular form for easy understanding:

Ad Serving

• Can cover viewability and vast number of metrices in 3rd Party Brand Safety Tools
• More control on creative managing and serving
• Serves creatives and tracks variety of attributions and data points
• Creative rotations can be controlled on the Ad-Serving platform
• Tag code snippets can be VAST, JavaScript and Image formats
• Tedious to setup in the platform
• Transparent visibility of the activity
• Impression discrepancy between third-party Ad-Server and advertiser can be controlled
• Fraud rate is often lower with such activity

Ad Tracking

• May not track viewability in the brand safety tools/platforms and may cover limited metrices
• Not much of a control in creatives, since they are served by the publisher or third-party companies
• Can track only impressions and clicks generally
• Creative rotations done by the third-party company
• Code snippets are mainly JavaScript 1x1 pixels and i-frame format
• Easy to setup in the platform
• Lack of visibility of the campaign activity
• Impression discrepancy between third-party Ad-Server and advertiser cannot be controlled
• High Fraud rate often observed with these activities