What is a Demand-Side Platform?

A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is an integral part of the digital advertising landscape and one of the major players in the online ad-serving process. However, their definition and roles aren’t always well-understood and can sometimes be confused with other actors. Learn everything you need to know about DSPs and why advertisers use them.

Definition of a Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is a type of advertising technology (adtech) software employed by advertisers and other buyers to facilitate the bidding and purchasing of ad inventory from selling entities.

DSPs help advertisers buy ads using two specific technologies: programmatic advertising and real-time bidding (RTB). These are the same technologies employed by the seller entity equivalent of the DSP, the Supply-Side Platform (SSP).

What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising refers to the use of automated technologies to facilitate buying, selling, and trading media, such as ad inventories and ad spaces. Programmatic advertising exists in contrast to traditional advertising, which requires publishers and advertisers to contact each other and reach agreements manually.

Understanding programmatic advertising requires knowledge of other common adtech terminology, including:

• Real-time bidding (RTB): Real-time bidding is a technology designed to facilitate the trading of ad inventory through an automated auction system. RTB is one of the most efficient ways to buy and sell media to large audiences.
• Programmatic direct: Programmatic direct refers to the practice of selling ad inventory to advertisers directly and without using an auction system. Programmatic direct is the best way to guarantee premium-quality ad placements (e.g., a top-ranked publisher’s website).
• Programmatic advertising ecosystem: This term refers to the collective of buying and selling entities using programmatic advertising to trade media and ad spaces, such as DSPs and SSPs.

Importance of Demand-Side Platforms

Demand-Side Platforms are essential in the digital ad-serving process because they allow advertisers and other buyers to automatically and conveniently buy large amounts of high-quality traffic.

They enable advertisers to reach and set up ad campaigns with hundreds, if not thousands, of different publishers and selling entities without manually contacting each one, freeing user acquisition agents for other tasks.

Additionally, DSPs allow advertisers to monitor and manage each ad campaign’s performance in real time. An advertiser using a DSP can, for example, adjust a specific campaign on the fly even after it started, improving its key performance indicators (KPIs) and scaling it up or down depending on its current performance.

How Do Demand-Side Platforms Work?

The best way to understand how Demand-Side Platforms work is to view them as the digital advertising equivalent of a stockbroker. Just as investors use stockbroking platforms to buy stock from a stock exchange, advertisers use DSPs to buy ad inventory from an ad exchange.

Basic Processes

DSPs and Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) operate on two sides of an advertising exchange, a platform designed to connect buyers and sellers using DSPs and SSPs. To understand how a DSP works is also critical to understanding how SSPs work and how the two interact.

Here are the basic steps of the process:

• First, publishers and other selling entities use an SSP to connect to the ad exchange and send an ad request.
• The ad exchange receives and lists the ad request from the publisher, making it available for bidding.
• Advertisers connect to the ad exchange through the DSP and bid on the ad request using real-time bidding (RTB).
• The highest bid wins, allocating the advertiser’s inventory to the publisher’s request. The advertiser’s ad is then served on the website the publisher has ad slots on.

Although the essential purpose of a DSP is to serve as an intermediary between an advertiser and an ad exchange, the DSP also provides many other valuable functions.

For instance, DSPs can help advertisers create and manage multiple simultaneous campaigns with different ad exchanges and SSPs, all from a single interface.

User Targeting

DSPs also perform crucial targeting tasks and ensure users see relevant ads. Each DSP can be configured to meet specific user targeting parameters, such as a visitor’s age, gender, geographic location, and interests.

For instance, suppose a website has detected that a specific user is a 25-year-old male from Miami, Florida, interested in technology and computing. The website will send a personalized ad request to an SSP with these targeting parameters. The ad exchange then attempts to match the request with a DSP that most closely matches these parameters.

The DSP will then compare its own targeting parameters with those of the request, and if at least one criterion matches, send a bid. The more matching parameters, the more the DSP stands to gain, meaning they are more likely to bid higher and become the auction winner.

If an advertiser’s DSP wins the bid, the ad exchange completes the transaction and sells the publisher’s request to that advertiser. The publisher’s website then begins displaying the ad.

The process takes less than 0.1 seconds (100 milliseconds) to complete, allowing ad exchanges to match publisher requests and advertiser inventories hundreds of thousands of times in a single day.

Why Should You Use a DSP?

If you are an advertiser with large quantities of ad inventory for sale, using a Demand-Side Platform offers numerous benefits:

• One platform, multiple campaigns: A DSP helps you centralize all of your ad campaigns in one place, regardless of the number of ad exchanges, SSPs, and publishers you can reach.
• Real-time performance metrics: DSPs provide real-time information on your ad campaigns’ performance, letting you adjust and change them without waiting for an end-of-campaign report.
• Ad relevance: Using a DSP is a great way to ensure your ads are shown to your target audience, maximizing the relevance of your ads to website visitors.
• Cost-efficiency: Although DSPs bid for ad space on your behalf, they will only bid more on requests that best match your targeting parameters, where they stand the most to gain.

Main Components of a Demand-Side Platform

Although every DSP has different features, services, and specifics, all use the same essential elements and components. Here is a breakdown of each and how they help a DSP function.

Integrations with Other Tools and Entities

Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) are designed to integrate with multiple other elements of the programmatic advertising ecosystem. For instance, they must be able to communicate with ad exchanges and Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) to respond to ad requests.

However, DSPs also integrate with other valuable tools and functions to assist the advertiser. For example, most DSPs integrate with analytics platforms, providing actionable information on ad campaign performance. They can also connect with payment gateways to facilitate the safe transfer of funds.

Other integrations include data management platforms, brand safety technologies, and other risk management options.

User Interface

The user interface (UI) is the first thing a user sees when discovering new software. The UI of a quality DSP organizes every functionality it offers, making it possible for the user to navigate it and find the functions and utilities they need quickly.

Well-designed user interfaces don’t just have good visual design; they organize the DSP’s functionality efficiently and help improve the user’s workflows.

User Profile Archive

A DSP’s user profile archive or user profile database is a data repository containing multiple types of information about the users that viewed ads. The primary purpose of this archive is to obtain and categorize data regarding an advertiser’s audience, such as age, gender, geographic location, interests, and ad viewing frequency.

The archive then organizes the information and provides actionable data to advertisers, helping them adapt an ad campaign to reach the audience more efficiently. For example, an advertiser can use the data to identify potential issues, such as inefficient audience targeting or over-exposure to the same ads, and implement changes to the campaign, such as re-targeting or frequency capping.

Reporting Database

The reporting database is the element of a DSP that collects data from ad campaigns, stores them, and organizes them to create complete end-of-campaign reports. The primary purpose of this database is to serve as an archive of past campaigns, which advertisers can use to assess their long-term performance.

Campaign Spending Controls

Campaign spending controls, colloquially known as the “banker” or the “cashier,” are specialized functions and features designed to help advertisers visualize their budget and avoid overspending on ad campaigns.

Due to how Real-Time Bidding (RTB) functions, using a DSP can result in a high frequency of bids per second, making it easy to exceed your budget. Overspending issues can be further compounded by delays between bid placements and receiving an auction-winning notice from ad exchanges.

Campaign spending control features include overall budget management, maximum daily spending limits, and visualization of the most cost-efficient pricing models. These functions ensure that you spend no more than the allotted amounts, even during periods of heavy bidding and ad inventory purchases, providing efficient campaign budget management. 

Campaign Tracker

A campaign tracker is a function of a DSP that collects and organizes data about an ongoing ad campaign’s performance. It provides actionable information in real-time, letting an advertiser change a campaign’s details and configuration even after launch.

Data collected includes the number of clicks, views, impressions, installs, user demographics, and many more. After a campaign ends, the data collected by a campaign tracker is then sent to the reporting database to summarize it into an end-of-campaign report.

Ad Server

Ad servers are crucial elements of a DSP and the primary component responsible for serving ads to website visitors. The purpose of an ad server is twofold:

They are the storage space for your ad creatives and markups, ensuring your ads are available in the correct sizes and formats for different devices. They communicate with the website containing the ad space to deliver the ad to the user, ensuring its delivery and the generation of impressions.

Depending on how the DSP is configured, the ad servers used may be internal or external. Internal ad servers are owned or managed by the DSP. External ones are managed by a third party on behalf of the DSP.

Bidding Systems

A bidding system is the component of a DSP responsible for placing bids on behalf of the advertiser during RTB auctions. These systems are typically hosted in a server or data center in a specific world region. 

The further the distance between two Internet-connected computer systems, the higher the latency (lag), meaning more time passes between one system sending data and the other receiving it. Latency is detrimental during RTB auctions because a delayed bid or response means other, faster bidders have better chances of winning.

To counteract the effects of latency, most DSPs have access to multiple bidding systems in different world regions to respond to ad requests and place bids more quickly. Acceptable latency is usually under 200 milliseconds, although the faster, the better.

Types of Demand-Side Platforms

Demand-Side Platforms can be categorized into two groups: self-serve DSPs and full-service DSPs. Understanding the difference between the two types is crucial because they do not offer the same range of functions and services.

Self-serve DSPs

A self-serve DSP is little more than a software platform that provides tools and functionality but leaves the specifics of ad campaign creation and management to the users (e.g., advertisers, ad agencies, and other buying entities).

While a self-serve DSP may have staff and provide support resources, they are generally limited to maintenance and troubleshooting. Users of self-serve DSPs have complete control and responsibility over their ad campaigns, performance monitoring, and reporting.

Full-service DSPs

While a full-service DSP (also known as a managed-service DSP) provides the same essential features as self-serve DSPs, their primary advantage is the range of additional services and support they can offer advertisers.

Most full-service DSPs offer access to account managers and dedicated teams to help you manage and configure your ad campaigns. Although full-service platforms are more expensive and slightly less flexible, they provide unparalleled convenience, letting you focus on other tasks.

(Pros) Advantages of Using DSPs to Media Buyers

Media buyers looking to take advantage of programmatic advertising technologies can use a DSP to gain multiple benefits. Here are the most significant pros of using a DSP.

Marketing Efficiency

The primary benefit of a Demand-Side Platform is automation. Using DSPs lets advertisers and media buyers bid on hundreds of different impressions within minutes. They eliminate the need to manually contact and sign agreements with the owners of each ad space and centralize all ad campaigns into a single, unified platform and interface, significantly increasing efficiency.

Easy Data Management

Most DSPs come with various data management components and features designed to help media buyers improve ad campaign performance. They can not only collect and aggregate audience data but also analyze and organize it for multiple purposes, from retargeting to building post-campaign reports. Regardless of the media buyer’s intent, making data management easy is a core benefit of most DSPs.

Optimal Targeting

The data management features of a DSP provide media buyers and advertisers with the information they need to configure, adapt, and optimize their audience targeting strategies, ensuring they display the most relevant ads to viewers. Targeting optimization increases the impression and click-through rates, resulting in more revenue.

Improved Reach

A DSP is an essential element of programmatic advertising. Its automation capabilities allow a single advertiser or media buyer to contact numerous ad exchanges, SSPs, and websites simultaneously. Consequently, they can reach more viewers by displaying creatives in more ad spaces.

Support Resources

DSPs offer a range of support resources and documentation to help media buyers make the most of all available features and improve user experience. While most DSPs may provide essential resources for general support and troubleshooting, full-service DSPs go the extra mile. They can provide live personnel, such as account managers or teams, to assist you, help you configure your campaigns, and provide additional support services.

Real-Time and Easier Bidding

DSPs are essential for participating in Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and auctions on ad exchanges. The average ad exchange auction, from the moment an SSP posts a request to the final sale and transaction, is completed in less than 0.1 seconds.

A DSP can make several bids across multiple exchanges on your behalf in this timeframe. It is the only way to place bids on time, win these auctions, and display your ads to the viewers.

(Cons) Disadvantages of Using DSPs to Media Buyers

Although DSPs present many advantages, media buyers considering them must also be aware of their drawbacks. Here are the primary concerns of using a DSP.

Usage Costs

One of the most common conditions for using a DSP is to sign up for a monthly subscription, the costs of which do not necessarily include other services. Media buyers must pay careful attention to the total amount they spend when using a DSP’s services, as the additional service fees and other charges can add up and drive the overall ad-spend costs up.

Complexity

Although the complexity of a DSP can be mitigated by a well-designed user interface and comprehensive documentation, many DSPs have numerous functionalities and options that can be challenging to navigate and fully understand.

Additionally, each DSP is built differently and has its own unique workflow. If you use multiple DSPs simultaneously or switch from one to another, you may need additional time to adapt and get used to the new pace.

Benefits of Creating a Customized Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

Most demand-side platforms available to advertisers and media buyers are essentially third-party services. They require payment or a monthly subscription to access, and you must abide by the DSP provider’s terms and conditions.

A significant percentage of the world’s top-performing brands develop in-house programmatic advertising strategies, keeping as much of the process internal to their company and processes as possible. DSPs are a critical element of these strategies: instead of relying on external DSPs, they build 100% custom platforms.

Although building a custom DSP is a significant investment, there are many benefits to adopting this strategy. Here are the top 3 benefits of 100% custom DSPs.

Ownership of Data and Technology

Building a custom DSP means creating, owning, and maintaining the infrastructure it needs to run, including potential new intellectual properties (e.g., backend software) during the building process. This factor grants an undeniable advantage to the advertiser or media buyer: they have complete control and ownership over the data and technologies used to run the DSP.

Elimination of White-Label Fees and Commissions

Although the upfront costs of running a custom DSP are steep, if the advertiser’s media budget is sufficiently high, it may be more financially advantageous to build their own than continue to use third-party solutions.

With a custom DSP, you own the infrastructure, meaning you don’t need to pay service fees, commissions, and other charges to use the DSP’s functionality and services. Besides using it to contact ad exchanges and run ads on publisher websites, you can also become a third-party service provider of your own and rent the technology to other advertisers, creating an additional revenue stream.

Control of the Product’s Roadmap

As the owner of the infrastructure needed to run a DSP, you have total control over the product roadmap. In practical terms, operating a 100% custom DSP allows your team to develop and implement bespoke features and solutions, creating a unique value proposition and allowing you to fine-tune your DSP’s capabilities to your exact needs.

14 Examples of Demand-Side Platforms

Here is a list of the top 14 best-performing Demand-Side Platforms currently available.

1. Adobe Advertising Cloud (formerly Adobe Media Optimizer, Efficient Frontier, and TubeMogul)

Adobe’s premier programmatic advertising solution traces its roots to TubeMogul, a programmatic advertising platform launched in 2011 and the first DSP of its kind for video ads. After its acquisition by Adobe in 2016, the company rolled the DSP’s technologies into Adobe Media Optimizer, and as of 2022, it now forms part of Adobe Advertising Cloud.

Adobe’s DSP is one of the world’s only ad platforms to offer a fully unified and automated solution for all advertising channels, from paid search results and native ads to video and TV creatives. Advertising Cloud is also designed to integrate with other Adobe tools and software, such as Adobe Analytics, Audience Manager, and Adobe’s brand safety and fraud protection measures.

2. Adform

Adform is a global adtech company based in Denmark and founded in 2002. One of their primary products is the Adform DSP, a global-reach, self-serve DSP providing access to numerous media and inventory types: display, video, and native ads on mobile and desktop platforms.

The Adform DSP supports both open exchanges (real-time bidding) and programmatic deals, providing multiple avenues to sell ad inventory more efficiently.

3. Amazon DSP (formerly Amazon Advertising Platform)

The online eCommerce giant has its own demand-side platform, Amazon DSP, previously known as the Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) until 2022. Amazon DSP is the newest iteration of Amazon’s programmatic advertising technology, offering improved flexibility and new functionality over the previous-generation AAP.

Depending on the options package and the desired degree of control, Amazon DSP may either be a standard self-service platform or a full-service managed DSP.

The platform can serve numerous display and video ads on Amazon-owned digital properties, including the primary Amazon website, Amazon-powered devices (e.g., FireTV), websites managed by Amazon (e.g., IMDb, Audible, Twitch, etc.), and across the web.

The Amazon DSP takes advantage of the company’s technologies to provide unique, highly-accurate audience targeting options, including audience lifestyle, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising (targeting users that visit websites thematically related to your product)

4. Beeswax (Owned by Comcast)

Although FreeWheel, a Comcast company, purchased Beeswax in 2020, the company retained the Beeswax name for its programmatic advertising software.

Beeswax includes both a standard self-serve DSP and what the company refers to as a Bidder-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution, a bidding platform with DSP-like functionality offered to advertisers using a similar business model as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Beeswax DSP’s unique value proposition is a technology that offers advertisers and media buyers much greater control over data and algorithms than standard DSP offerings. In practice, this means Beeswax DSP provides part of the benefits of building a custom DSP solution for a fraction of the costs.

5. Verizon Media DSP (formerly BrightRoll)

Headquartered in New York, the Verizon Media DSP started as BrightRoll; a demand-side platform initially launched in 2006. Previously operated by an independent company, the Brightroll DSP was purchased by Yahoo in 2014 and then by Verizon Media in 2017. Although the company initially kept the Brightroll name, it was renamed Verizon Media DSP in 2020.

Verizon Media DSP is an omnichannel platform supporting a wide selection of media types: display ads, video ads, native ads, CTV, audio ads, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) ads. These media types can reach numerous platforms, from traditional desktop and mobile devices to more unusual ones, such as smart televisions and city billboards.

The Verizon Media DSP is part of Verizon’s wider ecosystem of programmatic advertising products and leverages the company’s first-party data for ad serving and audience targeting.

6. Basis Technologies (formerly Centro)

Previously known as Centro before a name change in 2021, Basis Technologies was founded in October 2001 by Chicago-based digital advertising specialists. The Centro DSP, now known as the Basis Technologies DSP, has ranked among the top-performing demand-side platforms for many years.

The Basis Technologies DSP is a demand-side platform powered by artificial intelligence offering both self-serve and managed-service packages. Basis DSP features an easy-to-navigate user interface with access to high-quality inventory. The company’s use of AI technologies makes the Basis DSP easily scalable and adaptable for ad campaigns of any size.

Basis also provides comprehensive documentation, support resources, and training materials, ensuring users always have an opportunity to make the most out of the platform.

7. Criteo Commerce Max

Criteo is a digital advertising and adtech company founded in 2005 and headquartered in Paris, France. Criteo has designed multiple adtech solutions for the digital advertising industry, including the Criteo Artificial Intelligence Engine and Criteo Commerce Max, a demand-side platform.

Criteo Commerce Max is a new self-service DSP powered by what the company refers to as open-internet programmatic inventory, providing media buyers and advertisers with the opportunity to reach audiences even outside the websites displaying the ads.

Commerce Max’s alpha version launched in 2022. Although it is currently in limited availability mode, Criteo’s current customers include high-profile names such as Best Buy and GroupM. The company is aiming for a full release of Commerce Max in 2023.

8. Demandbase

Demandbase is an account-based marketing company specializing in business-to-business (B2B) solutions and services. The company’s internally-developed demand-side platform, Demandbase DSP, was explicitly designed with the company’s expertise and customers in mind.

Unlike most other demand-side platforms available today, Demandbase DSP is an exclusively B2B platform designed to target other businesses instead of a traditional consumer audience. This DSP includes numerous B2B-specific features, such as strict brand safety measures, account-based audience targeting, account-level data reporting, and multiple pricing and ad spend optimizations.

9. Google Marketing Platform (Google Display Network, DV360)

Like most other tech giants, Google operates its own next-generation demand-side platform, the Google Marketing Platform (GMP).

Google launched GMP in 2018 by combining or integrating multiple Google features and services, such as the Google Display Network (GDN), an advertising network managed by the tech giant, and Google Display & Video 360 (DV360), the company’s previous DSP, specialized in display and video ads.

As a DSP, Google Marketing Platform builds upon and improves over its predecessor by unifying numerous features previously spread across different Google services into a single, easy-to-use platform.

GMP offers more efficient data analysis and reporting over its predecessors, API and ad server integrations suitable for all users, including smaller and mid-sized clients, and many other advanced functionalities for larger, higher-budget customers.

10. InMobi

InMobi is the leading Indian advertising company and a global leader in the adtech industry. The company specializes in mobile advertising and primarily serves the Asian and African markets.

The InMobi DSP is a demand-side platform specialized in mobile marketing and reaching audiences through mobile devices, especially in markets and regions where significant percentages (>75%) of Internet traffic is mobile. This DSP includes a bidding system that uses machine learning to build user acquisition and retention rates on mobile devices.

The DSP’s algorithms are optimized to drive up customer lifetime value and performance indicators most relevant to mobile ads, such as app installs and Cost Per Install (CPI) pricing.

11. Quantcast Platform

Quantcast is a digital advertising firm specializing in real-time marketing driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The company’s demand-side platform product is Quantcast Platform, powered by Quantcast’s Ara AI/ML engine.

Quantcast describes the Quantcast Platform as an “intelligent audience platform,” a next-generation DSP. Although it can perform every task expected of a standard DSP, Quantcast Platform offers additional benefits due to its AI/ML focus.

Unique features include access to complete insights regarding ad campaigns and audiences within seconds, automated ad campaign execution, ML-powered interpretation of consumer intent data, and many more.

12. The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk is a Californian adtech company specializing in developing new programmatic marketing solutions focused on personalized content delivery.

One of the company’s most popular products is the Trade Desk DSP, an independent demand-side platform with global reach and a high-transparency policy.

This platform opens advertising opportunities to virtually every channel and device, from standard display, native, and video ads to connected TVs (CTVs), audio and podcast advertising, and digital out-of-home (DOOH).

The Trade Desk DSP allows advertisers and media buyers to categorize audiences into defined segments and create personalized ads for each segment, maximizing ad relevancy and user experience.

13. Vertoz

Vertoz is a New York-based adtech and marketing technology company aiming to help new and emerging businesses expand their digital presence as efficiently as possible. All Vertoz products and services are developed in-house to achieve this objective.

The Vertoz DSP is one of the primary services offered by the company and is powered by 100% internally developed programmatic advertising technologies. Due to Vertoz’s focus on new and smaller-sized businesses, this DSP is easy to use and highly scalable.

14. Xandr Invest (Purchased by Microsoft, formerly AppNexus)

Xandr was founded in 2018 as a subsidiary of AT&T, then known as AT&T Advertising & Analytics. In June 2018, it acquired AppNexus, alongside its technologies and products, including the AppNexus DSP. Following a renaming of the company to Xandr in September 2018, the AppNexus DSP was rebranded to Xandr Invest.

Although it has changed hands multiple times due to several mergers and acquisitions, the Xandr company currently serves as a subsidiary of Microsoft and continues operating and maintaining the Xandr Invest DSP.

This platform specializes in high-relevancy, high-efficiency video ads for desktop, mobile, and connected TVs. The company also maintains an API and a learning and documentation center, providing advertisers with robust automation features and complete control over their video ad campaigns.

DSP vs. SSP: What is the Difference?

Although they are on two sides of the same process, it is critical to distinguish a demand-side platform from its publisher-side counterpart, the supply-side platform.

The primary differences between a DSP and an SSP are each platform’s intended users and objectives. Though both platforms contact each other and use ad exchanges, a DSP facilitates bidding on available ad space and is primarily intended for advertisers, media buyers, ad agencies, and other buying entities.

An SSP is designed to facilitate listing available ad spaces and posting ad requests. Consequently, SSPs are mainly intended for publishers, media owners, and other selling entities.

DSP vs. Ad Networks: What Are the Differences?

An ad network is an adtech platform that aggregates buying and selling entities onto a single unified platform. The primary purpose of an ad network is to help broker deals between buyers (e.g., advertisers) and sellers (e.g., publishers) by collecting, presenting, and facilitating the sale of ad inventory.

Ad networks are intermediaries for both publishers and advertisers. Both sides of the ecosystem can use an ad network, either representing themselves or through an ad agency.

In contrast, a DSP is exclusively intended for use by advertisers because the primary purpose of a DSP is to represent the demand side of the ecosystem and facilitate the needs of buying entities.

How to Choose a DSP

Although numerous demand-side platforms are available to today’s advertisers, it is critical to know how to choose the DSP that best suits your needs. A DSP that correctly fits your business and marketing goals will generate a much higher return on investment (ROI) than a DSP that only partially matches your needs.

Below are the top 3 features and criteria to look for when choosing a DSP.

Ad Inventory and Target Audiences

The core of a successful ad campaign is serving the right ads to the right audience. Consequently, it is crucial for an advertiser to choose a DSP that carries quality, high-relevancy inventory, targets the correct audiences for your business, and delivers the ads using the best possible media types.

For example, a company primarily targeting consumers on mobile should use a DSP that primarily targets this combination of audience and device type. A DSP specializing in B2B or serving ads to devices other than mobile (e.g., connected TVs, DOOH devices) does not meet those requirements.

Geographic Areas Served

Programmatic advertising occurs in real-time, making it crucial to ensure that the ad creatives are not only available in the right languages but also relevant to the correct geographic areas. To ensure your DSP always lets you reach the best audiences, check the depth of its geolocation targeting features, even if the DSP has a global reach.

For example, if you need to serve ads to customers in a specific area of Mexico, you must ensure your DSP can target Spanish-speaking audiences located in the correct state and country.

Data Integration Features

Although many DSPs offer built-in features to enhance the quality of your ad campaigns, you may sometimes need more, especially if you have access to quality data and information.

One of the best ways to ensure your ad campaigns are as successful as possible is to use a DSP’s data integration features, such as first-party data uploading, data management platform integrations, and data measurement and reporting features.

These integrations enable additional strategies, such as retargeting, account-based marketing, new audience acquisition, and real-time reviewing of campaign metrics and KPIs.

Monetization and Pricing Models

Depending on the DSP you choose and the ad types and formats your campaign employs, you can use one of multiple pricing and monetization models. The top 4 models are Cost per Click (CPC), Cost Per Mille (CPM), Cost per Action (CPA), and Cost Per View (CPV).

• Cost per Click (CPC): The CPC model is a performance-based pricing format where an advertiser pays a specific amount to the publisher when a user clicks on an advertisement. The value of a click on a CPC ad varies depending on the website or ad space’s prominence. For instance, a CPC ad on a high-performing site usually charges $0.20 to $0.40 per click.
• Cost per Mille (CPM): The CPM model is one of the most popular ways to monetize a website because payment depends on impressions (views) instead of other, more specific actions. The word “Mille” is Latin for “one thousand,” meaning the advertiser pays the specified amount for every 1,000 impressions recorded.
• Cost per Action (CPA): Under the CPA model, an advertiser rewards a publisher for every user that successfully completes a specific action. In this context, “Action” can have multiple meanings. For instance, it may be a user installing an application on a mobile device, subscribing to a specific product, or making a purchase on an eCommerce platform.
• Cost per View (CPV): The CPV model is typically only employed in video advertising, as the word “view” refers to a user viewing a video ad instead of the more general “impression” used on other ad types. A common condition for CPV pricing is that advertisers only pay publishers if the user has viewed the ad in its entirety without skipping it early.

Find Top-Performing DSPs with CodeFuel

At CodeFuel, we make it our priority to help you monetize your digital assets as efficiently as possible as efficiently as possible for your online advertising too. Whether you are an advertiser, media buyer, or another buying entity, contact our team today and let us find the best demand-side platforms and other monetization avenues for your digital properties.

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