RTB Online advertising with real time bidding

Buying and selling digital media placements via real time bidding, or RTB in short, has become abundant since the early 2010s. Despite that many advertisers being unfamiliar with the technology it is often the underlying platform for most online media spending today.

What is RTB?

Real time bidding is a method of selling and buying digital media placements by bidding in real time on advertising inventory.

When a placement becomes available the publisher will initiate an auction for it which will allow interested advertisers to place bids, the highest of which will win and be then able to show their ad to the user. RTB works for a multitude of advertising formats such as banners, videos, native ads and many more.

How does it work?

A typical real time bidding auction happens similar to high frequency trading in mere split-seconds. While a user is loading a website the available placements there will be made available by a so called supply side platform ("SSP") acting on behalf of the publisher to sell the inventory.

The SSP will provide demand one or several side platforms ("DSP") with information about the auction such as placement details, user information and vertical context. This data will be evaluated by the DSP and matched with available bids from their advertisers, which are then returned to the SSP.

Finally the SSP decides the winning bid and informs the DSP which ad to display on the website.

Some benefits of RTB

Real time bidding at its core tries to achieve fair pricing for media inventory by empowering supply and demand side alike with data and insights on the inventory, the user and the advertiser interest in the placement. When done right RTB can deliver exceptional quality and performance at a lower price than fixed volume buying.

Another important advantage of RTB is its sheer volume and scale, which allows advertisers to tap into massive reach without lengthy negotiations or setup procedures.