this is a 2017 guide to the digital
display market
from the iab to understand how far we
have come in the last 20 years of
online display trading we need to start
from the beginning
in the beginning an advertiser or an
agency representing an advertiser
would work directly with a publisher to
purchase ad space on their website
this could be done on a tenancy basis
with every visitor to the website
being shown the same message or the
advertiser could purchase a share of the
total impressions
paid for at a cost per thousand rate
publishers who were unable to monetize
all of their available inventory
would sell on their remnant impressions
to add networks
who would aggregate supply from multiple
publishers and sell on packaged
inventory at a discounted rate
this method became known as indirect
selling with networks
acting as brokers or intermediaries for
publishers
ad networks pioneered many of the
techniques that are still used today
such as building audiences to better
qualify impressions
but the model also introduced
inefficiencies which ultimately led to
the creation
of the ad exchange model this model
gave rise to the beginnings of data
management platforms
third parties who specialized in
understanding the unique characteristics
of site visitors
and overlaying that data at an
additional cost
sellers could make their audiences
available on the exchanges
and buyers could pick and choose
individual impressions
they could either bid on individual
impressions through real-time bidding
auctions
or bulk by inventory that met their
targeting requirements regardless of the
source
both buy-side and sell-side benefited
from the trading efficiencies of this
new model
some agencies invested in their own
trading desks or outsourced to
independent trading desks
which would plug into entities known as
demand side platforms
they could streamline their media
acquisition strategies
based on their understanding of which
audiences were most likely to be
interested in their products
or services on the sell side
publishers made their impressions
available to aggregated
sell side platforms with rapidly
increasing availability of mobile
inventory
app developers started to appear
alongside traditional desktop publishers
the role of the ad network diminished as
they adopted this new technology
and today only a small proportion of
inventory is traded this way
similarly the role of the ad exchange
diminished as the dsp
and ssp began to interact more directly
conversely the importance of the data
management platform
in enriching the understanding of each
transaction in the supply chain
has increased in recent years we have
seen the increasing importance of ad
verification partners
these companies are entrusted with
validating the quality of the inventory
being transacted
and to ensure that it originated from
legitimate sources
we now find ourselves in an ecosystem
where the majority of ad impressions
are transacted through some degree of
automation including even the oldest
model of the direct relationship
between buyer and seller none of this
would have been possible without the
increasing
wealth of data now available to
marketers and the specialization
of every intermediary partner in the
supply chain
with each new step in the process
digital continues to innovate
and improve keeping it the most
effective way
to reach and wow your audience