Programmatic Ads & Ad-Tech: What's It Even About?

Introduction?

Chances are that if you are in marketing, you may have heard the word “programmatic” at one point or another. It’s a broad term that people use to describe many types of digital advertising. The article, What is Programmatic Advertising? The Definitive Guide for 2023, defines programmatic as: "The process of automating the purchase, sale, delivery, and measurement of digital advertising campaigns via advertising technology (AdTech) platforms”. Essentially, programmatic is when you use technology to automate the transaction process to track and make digital ads. This is a pretty broad explanation and includes many different types of programmatic advertising. Here I’ll try to explain in a little more detail what you can do with programmatic advertising to help your business or organization.?

Types of Programmatic Advertising

There are many types of programmatic advertising, things like ad displays, native ads, video ads, audio ads, social media ads, and mobile ads.

As for the systems that help place and manage advertisements, these are supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad networks, ad exchange, and data management platforms (DMPs).

Supply-Side Platforms

This is software used by publishers to automate the selling of advertising impressions on websites and apps based on impressions. It connects publishers to demand-side platforms (DSPs) and ad networks. These are important as they facilitate real-time bidding transactions, provide analytics reports, and optimize the selling of digital ads. SSPs help publishers find the right demand sources, automate ad network optimization and increase the chances of selling ad space.

Demand-Side Platforms

Demand-side platforms (DSPs), on the other hand, focus on facilitating media and help businesses determine which impressions to purchase. It is essentially an automated process of buying ad space online. DSPs allow advertisers to manage multiple ad exchanges and allow them to target to specific audiences.

Ad-Tech: Its Importance to Programmatic Ads

While this isn't a type of programmatic advertising, it's incredibly important in the way we use it in programmatic ads. These are the tools that marketers and advertisers use in businesses that help buy, manage and sell ads online.

Ad-tech is so incredibly important to not only understand what it is, but also how it can be used to effectively provide more revenue. Since so much money is spent on digital advertising, knowing where that money is going and how it's being spent is crucial. Ad-tech can help any brand organize and manage the tons of money spent on digital advertisements. If you are interested in learning more about ad-tech and how it interacts in the digital advertising space this article, What is Adtech?, is a great resource that you can use to read up on.

Ad Exchange

This is a marketplace where both SSPs and DSPs participate in. It supports the buying and selling of ads, which is why both supply-side and demand-side platforms can both run together in the same space. Ad exchange runs in real-time and supports the buying and selling of all forms of digital advertising.

Overall Takeaways

There are so many benefits to understanding and using programmatic advertising. A good portion of people in marketing will have encountered this and worked in programmatic. Which makes sense, as it's something that plenty of businesses invest in to help with targeting their advertising efforts to their audience. Automating these processes can help a business succeed in reaching their target audience, which in turn helps to effectively and efficiently streamline revenue and target the right people.