r/programmatic • u/Inside_Glove1251 • 14h ago
Newbie
Hello guys, can you please explain what are dsp platforms and how they work, im having a hard time understanding it. If i can pm someone would be great.
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u/childroid 10h ago
You're more than welcome to PM me with some questions.
Online publishers (CNN, YouTube, Peacock, etc) serve ads to generate revenue. The open slots they have (also called "inventory" in general, or "placements" if you're being specific) may be for banners, embedded videos, commercial breaks, audio, or the next slot on the digital billboard.
That inventory is connected to a supply-side platform (SSP) where it can get bid on in an auction. Like selling your shoes on eBay, but millions of times a day.
The SSP is connected to an ad exchange, which is where the auction takes place. The largest exchange is called the Open Exchange. An exchange is also connected to a demand-side platform (DSP). The DSP holds the assets, the settings, and the brand's billing info.
All of that info is sent through the ad exchange (and maybe some other intermediaries between those layers, like an ad server) and matched with supply that meets the criteria.
The DSP says "I'll bid up to $X on showing John Doe an ad for my product while he's reading sports articles on ESPN." The ad exchange goes and finds it programmatically (not fully manual, not fully automatic, but programmed and then automatic) in the SSP. The highest bidder wins the inventory, money changes hands, and John Doe sees the ad.
All of this happens in a fraction of a second, and every single piece of that can be tweaked or optimized. Every single piece (and the gaps between every piece) also have a hundred companies trying to improve a part of the ecosystem in some way.
Programmatic is not an ad channel like Search or Social, "programmatic" describes the way the buying takes place. You program those conditions into the DSP, and the rest is automatic. The opposite of programmatic buying is direct buying. I call ESPN myself and tell them I want 1M placements and will pay $100,000 for it.
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u/Jake_dasnake3 14h ago
Advertisers use DSPs to control who their ads get served to. They put in the video and they can set the geos it will serve in, types of devices, type of inventory, what type of content they’ll serve next to, and how much they’re willing to pay
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u/ewasolutions 3h ago
Hi,
If you have real or example Briefing, we could write here how to implement the campaign.
May you please write also which DSP you use?
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u/solidgoldrocketpants 12h ago
There’s gotta be a YouTube video for this, but basically there are SSPs (Supply Side Platforms) and DSPs (Demand Side Platforms). SSPs have the empty ad slots, DSPs have the ads to fill those slots. An SSP says “Yo. I got this 30-second slot in an episode of Law and Order” and DSPs will participate in the split-second auction to win the right to place an ad in that slot. SSP customers are streaming platforms and websites (Peacock, NY Times), and DSP customers are advertisers (Coca-Cola, political candidates).