Buying and selling digital advertising used to be not so easy as it is today. For example, if you wanted to organize an advertising campaign for the Vulkanvegas promo code, you would have to manually identify the most suitable sites, submit an offer to these sites and sign an agreement to make everything run smoothly. Even this process alone could take weeks.
Today, thanks to innovative technologies, this process has become much simpler, faster, and almost automatic. Demand-side platform (DSP) technology is one of the best examples of this. Thanks to DSP, digital advertising has turned into an efficient and almost instantaneous process. So, what is DSP?
What is DSP?
DSP is one of the most important tools advertisers use to run their online media campaigns. This technology allows the advertiser to buy ad impressions on several websites and complete this process from start to end automatically. Ad accepting websites (publishers) sign up for ad exchanges, and DSPs automatically decide which of these sites makes the most sense for the advertiser. The fee required for this job is also determined instantly through real-time bidding.
In this context, DSP is a platform that brings together those who want to publish advertisements and the sites where these advertisements can be published. Therefore, brands do not need to manually identify the most suitable sites for them and submit offers. Through a DSP, the advertiser can set a budget, choose their target audience and get as many ad impressions as they want. DSPs serve ads, manage real-time bidding and provide tracking and optimizations.
How Does DSP Work?
The main task of a DSP platform is to make the buying process easy for advertisers. Thanks to the algorithms included in the platform, the most relevant sites where advertisers can show their ads are listed, selected, and a fee is offered. All these processes are done in seconds, so you save both time and money.
DSPs bid on behalf of advertisers to drive impressions of ads by bidding in real-time and to determine the true value of CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions). They buy traffic by placing a bid based on the advertiser’s budget. Simply put, the advertiser creates a campaign, DSP determines the most suitable sites for this and ensures that the advertisement brings maximum benefit with minimum cost. The key features of a DPS platform are:
- RTB (Real-Time Bidding) – DPS determines high-performing websites by bidding in real-time for advertiser campaigns, and advertisements are published on these sites.
- Maximum Reach – DSP integrates with the most common ad exchange platforms, allowing you to reach millions of publishers from all over the world and display ads on mobile and web platforms.
- Monitoring All Campaigns on One Page – It is possible to review and analyze all your campaigns from a single center. You can easily optimize your campaigns by viewing details such as eCPM value, ad impression, click statistics, and campaign start/end date.
- Performance Control – You can easily manage your budget by stopping the advertisements on the sites with high costs or low performance by examining the expenditures and CTR – eCPM values.
Most Popular DSP Platforms
There are multiple companies that offer a DSP service, and predictably some of them are more popular than others. Below you can see some of the most widely used DSP platforms as of 2021.
- AdForm: Founded in 2002, this company was one of the first entrepreneurs in the DSP industry. It currently has branches in 26 countries and mainly works with advertising agencies, not companies. Since it also integrates DMP (Data Management Platform) technology into the DSP platform, it offers more comprehensive options in terms of managing campaigns compared to other services.
- MediaMath: This platform allows you to buy not only digital ads but also TV ads. MediaMath supports a type of advertising called DOOH (Digital Out of Home), meaning it can combine digital ads with real-world ads too. It also enables each company to receive service specific to their own needs, with support for numerous APIs.
- DoubleClick: This platform was recently acquired by Google and currently serves as “DV360”. It is a customized platform for the Google Display Network (GDN) and works integrated with services such as Google Analytics & Google Ads. Using Google Analytics data, it determines the most suitable sites for advertisers, and in this respect, it is possible to say that it offers an incredible variety. However, many users complain that the interface is complex, and a large budget is required to use it effectively.
DSP technology is gradually replacing ad exchanges, but it does so not by eliminating them but by expanding the features they offer. In other words, thanks to DSP platforms, ad exchanges can operate more efficiently and faster than before and provide more satisfactory results.
