Demand Side Platforms (DSP)

What is a DSP?

A demand-side platform (DSP) automates the buying of display, video, mobile, and search ads for you. DSPs use algorithms to group all the rates of various networks together on a single platform, and is the control center that allows you to buy media that’s sold programmatically (which is the majority of digital advertising today).

In addition to providing controls to target advertising to specific audiences, a demand-side platform usually employs sophisticated algorithms to automate or augment the targeting so an advertiser can apply budgets more efficiently.

What Targeting Capabilities are Available?

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Creative Size
• Display/Video/CTV
• Device Type
• Exchange
• Contextual Targeting
• Behavioral Targeting
• CRM Data
• Purchase Data
• Cookies
• Device Ids
• IPs
• etc.

With programmatic, targeting (and retargeting) is more focused. DSPs can target based on several different anonymized factors—demographics, geography, the type of device being used, and browsing behavior, to name a select few.

DSPs also tend to have more advanced performance tracking capabilities that are not possible through traditional ad networks, allowing advertisers to optimize their ad spend more efficiently.

DSPs offer advertisers a way to automate purchases over a huge selection of publishers’ ad inventory. Highly focused targeting combined with the performance tracking capabilities that DSPs offer means advertisers have better control over the quality of the inventory they’re buying. They’re just a small part of the programmatic ecosystem that’s paving the way for better, higher-performing ad technology.

It is important to distinguish that sometimes companies may pose as a DSP, but in reality they may be actually just using another company’s technology. They may have an ad operations team that is pulling the levers on the actual DSP on the backend, or they may have a an API integration to use another company’s DSP.

Example DSPs

• Rocket Fuel
• MediaMath
• Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP)
• AppNexus
• Invite Media > Google Doubleclick Bid Manager > Display and Video 360
• Basis (Centro)
• Turn
• Amobee
• DataXu
• Brightroll
• Rubicon Project
• The Trade Desk
• Choozle
• StackAdapt
• Criteo

In order to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each DSP, G2Crowd has ratings on multiple DSPs from real world users.

https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/demand-side-platform-dsp

In order to further determine the quality of the DSP and to determine which ones would be most effective for you to work with, you can ask some of the questions below:

• Which supply sources are you integrated with?
• How many monthly avails do you have? How are these avails broken down in term of:
  • Geography
  • Device Type
  • Product (Display, video, native, etc.)
  • Split between mobile web and app
• Which of the integrations are direct, and which of the integrations are through ad networks?
• Do you have an exclusive or pre-negotiated inventory?
• What is your monthly QPS per territory and what is your maximum QPS?
• What media buying models do you support? (CPA, CPM, CPC, etc.)
• Do you offer hyperlocal targeting? (GPS targeting)
• What level of campaign reporting do you have?
  • How far back does data go?
  • Any limitations?
• What methods of ad verification and measurement do you have?
• What is the fee structure for your DSP?
• Do you assist in setting up campaigns?
  • Is there a fee for this?
• What training options do you provide?
  • Is there a certification program?

Sources

• https://blog.applovin.com/ad-tech-deconstructed-what-is-a-demand-side-platform-or-dsp/
• https://www.clockworktalent.com/blog-top-ten-demand-side-platform-for-programmatic-advertising/#Amazon
• https://digiday.com/media/wtf-demand-side-platform/
• https://liveramp.com/blog/what-is-dsp-demand-side-platform-definition/

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.
— Confucius