A crucial part of any modern digital marketing strategy, programmatic advertising has completely transformed buying and selling inventory. eMarketer predicts that by 2023, the mobile programmatic advertising industry will be valued at $140 billion. Learn the ins and outs of programmatic display campaigns and the terminology you’ll need to start programmatic media purchasing.

What exactly is “programmatic display advertising”?

Ad inventory is bought and sold automatically via an ad exchange, which is what programmatic display advertising is all about. Using AI and ML in this process establishes a connection between advertisers and publishers. Depending on the specifications of advertisers and publishers, ads are automatically bought and sold by machines.

Is programmatic advertising on digital displays commonplace?

EMarketer predicts that by 2022, programmatic digital display advertising will account for 90.2% of the $115.23 billion spent on digital display advertising in the United States. Spending on mobile display ads grew at a slower pace than the programmatic industry as a whole in 2021. The decline is attributable to the fact that commercials are being shifted to other mediums, namely linked television (CTV). Despite this, mobile ad spending is still king, with five businesses (the entertainment industry, consumer packaged goods, financial services, telecommunications, and consumer electronics) allocating more than 70% of their digital ad expenditure to mobile.

Programmatic advertising explained: key concepts.

Marketers should familiarise themselves with the many concepts that make up programmatic advertising. To better comprehend mobile programmatic advertising, this article provides a glossary of keywords. 

Supply-Side Infrastructure (SSP)

Software that helps a digital publisher make real-time sales of the display, mobile and video impressions is called a supply-side platform (SSP). This process is fully automated, giving publishers more control over their stock. 

The Demand Side Platform (DSP)

A demand-side platform (DSP) is an alternative to a supply-side platform (SSP) that gives advertisers the freedom to purchase mobile, display, and video ad inventory independently via an ad exchange. They are a great digital marketing strategy for scalability since they enable marketers to buy high-quality traffic across several real-time bidding networks. Advertising through DSPs should help you save money by efficiently using your resources.

Commercial Swap

Advertisers, publishers, agencies, demand-side platforms, and supply-side platforms may all use an ad exchange to bid on available ad space. Publishers’ supply-side platforms provide inventory to the ad exchange, while advertisers’ demand-side platforms handle the administration of ad buying. Publishers can access many potential advertisers by joining an ad exchange through SSP. 

Programmatic media purchasing modalities 

Time-sensitive bidding (RTB)

Open to all advertisers and publishers, real-time bidding (RTB) is a kind of auction in which the price of inventory is settled at the moment. In RTB, the highest offer is accepted. Ad exchanges function similarly to traditional auctions but with the added benefit of automation for both publishers and advertisers. 

So how exactly does bidding in an RTB auction function?

Automatically selling display, mobile, and video impressions to advertisers in real-time on an ad exchange is made possible by SSP, which digital publishers use. On the other side, marketers use DSP to streamline the process of purchasing ad impressions from different publishers. In this way, many advertisers may place bids on a single impression, and the highest-priced advertiser wins the right to display their ad to the user. Note that this rapid succession of events takes place in a single second. Consider a game software that forces the user to watch a commercial before moving on to the next level. When this occurs, an auction is held by the mobile SSP. DSP advertising then allows advertisers to place bids, and within milliseconds, the highest bidder is selected, and their ad is shown to the user.