Yes we’re talking about cookies. But before closely inpect our target Google, let’s take a step back for a higher-level view at the online advertisement industry to get a bigger picture—the AdTech ecosystem.
The key of everything is programmatic advertising, and it is the main tool that distinguishes AdTech from MarTech (marketing technology).
Programmatic advertising is the use of technology to buy and sell digital ads. Programmatic advertising uses an automated process to purchase digital ad inventory from across the web, mobile, apps, video, and social media. Programmatic advertising uses workflow automation and machine learning algorithms to deliver the most effective ads to audiences based on a variety of signals, like demographics, shopping patterns, and more.
Programmatic advertising offers many benefits. Advertisers may achieve greater efficiency, more focused reach, transparency, and real-time measurement and optimization.
The AdTech ecosystem includes the following players (ordered from demand [advertisers] to supply [publishers]): advertisers, agency trading desks (ATDs), demand-side platforms (DSP), ad exchange, supply-side platform (SSP), ad server, and finally, publishers.
landscape of the AdTech industry. source: amazon Guide | What is adtech and why is it important? Btw, Ad Networks are more premium and exclusive (e.g. Yahoo! Publisher Network, Bing Ads). See a comparison here.
Agency Trading Desk (ATD) aka 中间商 (intermediary consultants)
Agency Trading Desks are services provided by a media agency for the advertisers. It’s most often like a layer on top of demand-side platforms that communicate directly with the Ad-Exchange.
The benefit of ATDs come in two-folds. First, programmatic advertising—bidding via Ad-Exchanges and managing campaigns are not pieces of Cookies, after all. Therefore, some advertisers might as well delegate whatever-this-shit-is to a professional agencies for domain expertise and sake of quietness. Second, ATDs aggregates advertisers and this might leads to bargaining power, hence, lower prices for ads.
Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs)
Demand Side Platform (DSP) is a software that allows advertisers to buy/purchase advertising space for advertising portfolio (i.e. videos, TVs, internets, etc.) (Fortune Business Insights). Advertisers can buy Ads by bidding on it. DSPs can either be self-service or full/managed service, which means either the advertisers interact directly with the platform or via an media agency.
Top players includes Google Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk, and Amazon Advertising, and so on.
Some DSPs are more integrative and offers a full-set of service (or, they would generally wish to do so). For example, Amazon likes its DSP to be:
A DSP is a single, organized marketplace where advertisers access publisher inventory through direct integrations, supply-side platforms (SSPs), and ad exchanges.
Working with demand-side platforms like Amazon DSP allows brands to reach relevant audiences and use insights to inform their strategies. DSPs are a cost-effective and efficient way for advertisers to buy digital advertising inventory.
A list of demand-side platforms.
Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs)
Similarly, SSP serves the other side of the market—publishers. It allows website owners to sell their ad inventory—aka, impressions—to specifically targeted buyers at the maximum price.
Ad server
Ad servers are the technological engines that allow advertisers and publishers to optimize, manage, and distribute ads across a multitude of paid channels.
Pretty much, they’re more like software tools. For an example:
What are examples of ad servers?
While there are multiple types of ad servers, Amazon Ad Server is a great example. Amazon Ad Server is a multichannel, third-party ad server for advertisers and agencies executing digital advertising strategies to build creatives, manage and optimize campaigns, and measure insights in delivering premium ad experiences with relevance and ease. Ad authors can export and generate files such as banners or video with Amazon Ad Server, offering fluidity and freedom to move creatives between ad servers.
the marketplaces: ad exchange
Just like a stock exchange, ad exchange is just the market place where the magic (or, the chaos) happens. At the trading marketplace, all the aforementioned players: ATDs, DSPs, SSPs, advertisers and publishers interact.
However, there’s the special case of Google….as always
Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) is Google’s own advertising service which allows you to place search results for your website on a search engine results page by paying for them.
Technically Google Ads is a DSP. Its difference from most other DSPs is that Google sells exclusively its own inventory (while other DSPs make it possible to purchase traffic from various suppliers).