Demand Side Platforms & Real Time Bidding

Published by Altaf Hussein df at January 29, 2018

Today I had the opportunity to do a guest lecture about RTB & DSP, at Digital Marketing Friend’s Meet in Dubai. (An organization where like-minded digital marketers meet and debate what’s new in this industry).

For quite some time Real-Time Bidding (RTB), Ad Exchanges, and Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) have been the trending topics for digital marketers. At this point the promise of the DSP is still greater than the reality in the Middle East, but sooner or later we will get there. A study suggests that at least 30% of ad spend globally is channeled through DSPs.

images blog article 2015 11 Nov real time bidding ecosystem - Demand Side Platforms & Real Time Bidding

Image credit: Site Scout

What is Demand Side Platforms:
Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) enable advertisers, agencies and ad networks, where they can buy and place ads in real-time on an impression-by-impression basis. Demand Side Platforms may have ad serving and campaign management capabilities or simply be able to integrate with other Advertiser Campaign Management products using APIs. Advertisers and marketers benefit from having a DSP by having a transparent view of the websites on which their ads are running and increasing ROI by buying ads for the cheapest possible price.

What is Real Time Bidding:
Real-time bidding refers to the buying and selling of online ad impressions through real-time auctions that occur in the time it takes a web page to load. Those auctions are often facilitated by ad exchanges or supply-side platforms or demand side platforms.

RTB works similar to financial markets and it lets advertisers manage and optimize ads from multiple ad-networks by granting the user access to a multitude of different networks.

How does it actually work?
As an ad impression loads in a user’s Web browser, information about the page it is on and the user viewing it is passed to an ad exchange, which auctions it off to the advertiser willing to pay the highest price for it. The winning bidder’s ad is then loaded into the web page nearly instantly; the whole process takes just milliseconds to complete. Advertisers typically use demand-side platforms to help them decide which ad impressions to purchase and how much to bid on them based on a variety of factors, such as the sites they appear on and the previous behaviour of the users loading them.

Before deciding on a DSP,

You must first have a clear understanding of how real time bidding will fit into your overall advertising strategy.
Understanding the ad channels through which a DSP can serve ads will narrow your selection down and ensure you are reaching your audience across all digital advertising channels.
Take time to dig deep into each and every cost associated with a DSP, as each DSPs have varying price structure.
You may also want to make sure your DSP is bidding on impressions from brand-friendly websites.
Make sure your DSPs can be integrated with attribution software, data management platforms, marketing automation software, or digital analytics software you may be using.

What are the best DSPs to use.
It will be unfair to say which one is best, as each as its pros and cons, but if you are a serious company based in UAE and looking to en-cash on my research and share my expertise evaluating each of the below platforms, please feel free to contact me for free consultation.

images blog article 2015 11 Nov rtb - Demand Side Platforms & Real Time Bidding

All DSPs have strengths and weaknesses, so if you’re shopping around, the best advice is to do your research and test several of them. Or we can do the test for you, please contact us.

DoubleClick (Google acquired this company recently)
MediaMath
Turn
Triggit
DataXu
Right Media (Yahoo which grabbed this for 680 Million in 2007, and it allowed a slow death, I always fail to understand why big company acquire comanies and allow them to die)
SiteScout
Invite Media (Google also acquired this company)
Rocket Fuel
X+1 (It’s been acquired by Rocket Fuel)
Lucid Media
BrandScreen
BrightRoll (A Yahoo Company)

Mind Sharing?

Altaf Hussein df

Altaf Hussein is the Founder of Ci CORP a digital innovation company based in Dubai, certified digital marketer, graphic designer & photographer. He also believes in knowledge transfer and that's the reason he is been contributing articles to our site about his expertise.