The Programmatic Glossary
A practical glossary designed to help marketers, advertisers and ad-tech professionals understand the terminology that powers programmatic advertising
Programmatic
Programmatic Advertising
The automated buying and selling of digital advertising space using technology, data and algorithms, replacing the manual process of humans negotiating, booking and placing individual ad campaigns. Programmatic makes it possible to buy and sell millions of individual ad impressions in real time.
HOW IT WORKS
Sellers (publishers) make their inventory available through SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms). Buyers (advertisers) access it through DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms). An ad exchange connects the two sides and runs automated auctions in real time. Every time a user loads a page, a fresh auction takes place in milliseconds. Data about the user and the context informs how much each buyer wants to pay.
EXAMPLE
en years ago, a brand wanting to advertise on 50 websites would need a team to contact each one, negotiate rates, sign insertion orders and traffic creatives manually. Today, they set up one campaign in a DSP (Demand-Side Platform), define their target audience and budget, and the system automatically finds and buys relevant impressions across thousands of websites simultaneously.
RELATED TERMS
RTB (Real-Time Bidding) | DSP (Demand-Side Platform) | SSP (Supply-Side Platform) | Ad Exchange | OpenRTB
★ LIMELIGHT INSIGHT: Programmatic advertising is the core of everything Limelight does. The platform gives publishers, ad networks and agencies the infrastructure to operate in the programmatic ecosystem at scale.
