The Programmatic Glossary
A practical glossary designed to help marketers, advertisers and ad-tech professionals understand the terminology that powers programmatic advertising
Programmatic
Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
The technology and process that enables advertising impressions to be bought and sold through automated auctions that happen in the fraction of a second it takes a webpage to load. It is the engine that powers the majority of programmatic advertising.
HOW IT WORKS
When a user starts loading a webpage, a signal is sent to an ad exchange. The exchange sends a bid request to connected DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms). Each DSP evaluates whether the impression matches its active campaigns, calculates a bid price and responds. The exchange selects the winner, notifies the winner's DSP and the winning ad is served. All of this happens in under 200 milliseconds.
EXAMPLE
You visit a news website. In the time it takes the page to load, an RTB (Real-Time Bidding) auction runs. Forty DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms) receive a bid request, 22 submit bids, the highest bid of $3.20 wins and a relevant ad load in the banner slot. This entire process takes roughly 100 milliseconds, invisible to you.
RELATED TERMS
Bid Request | Bid Response | OpenRTB | Ad Exchange | Programmatic Advertising
