DSP Platform

Victoria Hubkina
Jul 14, 2024
4 min

What is a DSP Platform?

DSP platform (demand-side platform) is a software that serves as an intermediary between the advertiser and SSP (sell-side platform) when buying ads. Moreover, they provide optimization tools and a wide range of targeting for marketers.

Such platforms most often work with the help of an RTB auction, allowing you to simplify and speed up the process of buying and selling ads for sites and advertisers.

Types of DSP Platforms

There are two types of DSP platforms:

Self-serve platforms. Such platforms offer marketers and direct advertisers to independently set up and optimize campaigns.
Full-service platforms. They provide an account manager who will be fully responsible for the campaigns and offer their full management so that advertisers can get the maximum result.

How does a DSP Platform work?

As mentioned earlier, DSP platforms mostly use RTB auction to buy and sell ads. The whole process includes several steps:

An advertiser creates a campaign, sets the desired targeting and a bid.
Publishers put their advertising platforms for an auction using DSP platforms.
An SSP shares information about the available advertising platforms to the DSP. Demand-side platform (DSP) analyzes targeting and decides whether to purchase impressions on a specific site.
Advertisers place bids to display their ads on the site and compete with each other.
The DSP buys impressions for the advertiser whose bid turned out to be a winning one on a particular site.

This whole process takes place literally in a second, which greatly simplifies the work of both publishers and marketers. Hopefully, now you understand what a demand-side platform in advertising is.

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What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

How to choose a DSP platform?

There are several criteria for choosing a DSP ad platform, let’s consider the main ones.

Ways of buying ads

It is necessary to pay attention to the principle of operation of the platform, it can be not only an RTB auction, but also private and guaranteed transactions.
Also, do not forget to check the available types of payment for ads — CPC, CPM, CPA or CPV.

Available targeting

Different platforms have different capabilities — targeting by GEO, devices, OS, languages, browsers is usually available, but there can also be more accurate options, for example, targeting by gender, age and interests.

Creatives and formats types

It is important to clarify in advance which formats of creatives the DSP platform accepts — video, animation, or only pictures. Of course, it also depends on advertising formats, if you are interested in a specific type of traffic, find out if it’s offered on a particular platform.

Analytics and optimization capabilities

An opportunity to make detailed campaign reports and check analytics are the most important factors in choosing a DSP platform. Find out in advance about the amount of available data, its quality, possible metrics, as well as the speed of making such a report.
Always check what you can use for optimization: white and blacklists, Micro bidding, or other algorithms for automation of these processes.

Traffic quality

One of the most important points is checking the quality of the traffic received. Various anti-fraud systems can be used for this, for example, in RichAds it is Adscore. Make sure that the platform provides protection against fraudulent traffic.

Advantages of DSP platforms

Why are demand-side platforms so important for advertisers? There are several undeniable advantages:

A wide range of sources. Such platforms purchase traffic from a large number of different sites with various content, so marketers receive the maximum amount of relevant traffic.
Different formats. Most often, DSP platforms provide not only classic types of traffic, but also the latest ones — display advertising, native and video formats.
Advanced targeting. In addition to targeting by technical parameters, they also offer retargeting, analysis of user behavior, information about their search preferences, gender, age, as well as the frequency of impressions and schedule.
Transparent statistics. The platforms offer various types of reports with a large number of metrics, as well as detailed information about the placement of advertising on specific sites.

Best DSP platforms

Knowing the demand-side platform meaning, you will definitely want to test it! We have selected top DSP platforms for you according to the criteria described above:

Stack Adapt,
MediaMath,
Chuzzle,
Adform,
Google Marketing Platform,
Xandr,
Criteria,
Adobe Advertising Cloud,
AdRoll,
Smartads.

It is important to note that in addition to DSP platforms, advertising networks can also act as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers, for example RichAds. Ad networks also allow marketers and direct advertisers to buy advertising in real time without contacting the sites directly.
Just like DSP platforms, advertising networks offer optimization tools, for example, Micro Bidding, Automated Rules, Target CPA, Performance Mode, etc.

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Victoria Hubkina

Starting off as an account manager at RichAds, Victoria Hubkina has been immersed in affiliate marketing as a content writer for over three years. Her expertise spans all the possible verticals from Gambling to Nutra and various types of traffic. By now, Victoria has written over 100 articles on marketing topics and crafted scripts for RichAds YouTube channel. Beyond work, she indulges in esotericism, film photography, and vintage fashion.