Widespread discussion about the rise of mobile and social media marketing have overshadowed remarkable innovations happening in display advertising.
Display advertising, being one of the Web’s first forms of advertising, is most often used for branding purposes and can include elements such as graphics, text, video and flash animations.
Web marketers have long enjoyed the reach, relevancy and real-time bidding of search engine PPC campaigns. Today’s latest display advertising innovations are bringing many of these search innovations to display advertising.
Relevant, Targeted and Open for Bidding
Display advertisements are smarter than ever before and utilize real-time datasets and bidding platforms that rival stock exchanges.
Innovative companies are creating real-time advanced markets for the buying and selling of display advertisements and anonymous demographic datasets.
The use of powerful behavioral targeting, valuable demographic data and contextual data are making display advertising more relevant and useful to website visitors.
Publishers can more efficiently find buyers for their placements and advertisers can openly place real-time bids for valuable placement and desirable demographics.
All of these innovations, along with the rise in online video consumption, are ushering in a new era of intelligent display advertising.
Making Sense of the Alphabet Soup
It can be frustrating to research new technology and discover a list of confusing acronyms. This often occurs because the new companies involved assign acronyms to their unique solutions.
The following terms, and their acronyms, are most commonly associated with today’s latest display advertising innovations.
- Demand Side Platforms (DSP)
- Supply Side Platforms (SSP)
- Real-time Bidding (RTB)
- Data Management Platform (DMP)
Demand side platforms serve as a transparent self-serve central hub for data management and real-time bidding of ad inventory, allowing you easy and efficient access to inventory from multiple ad exchanges, and independent publishers.
Related companies: DataXu, MediaMath, Turn, Triggit, [X+1], Invite Media (acquired by Google)
Whereas DSPs are advertiser centric, supply side platforms are focused on yield optimization for publishers. SSP’s help publisher maximize the revenue on all of their ad inventory providing them with direct access to advertiser demand sources.
Related companies: AdMeld, Rubicon Project, and PubMatic
Real-time bidding refers to the complex technology that allows advertisers to bid in real-time for placements on pages. Similar technology has revolutionized the search engine marketing industry and aspires to do the same for display advertising.
Data management platforms help both advertisers and publishers manage their data resources, internal and external sources of reporting data, audience information and behavioral targeting data all from one platform.
Related companies: BrightTag, Demdex, TagMan, and Brillig
Standardization, or the OpenRTB Consortium
As you would imagine, with all of these new players in the display advertising arena, there is an urgent need for open standards for the sharing of vital datasets.
One of the first challenges for DSPs and SSPs in a real-time bidding ecosystem is the standardization and sharing of block list data. This increases the accuracies of real-time bids and improves overall quality of ad inventory for all providers.
A group of leading digital advertising companies have recently announced the creation of OpenRTB, a group dedicated to improving ad technology sharing through open, safe, flexibile and safe industry standards.
The Road Ahead for Display Advertising
The future of display advertising is one of innovation, consolidation and acquisition.
As new well-funded startups advance the industry, well-positioned companies such as Microsoft and Google are looking to make key technology and talent acquisitions by purchasing these companies.
Online video’s growth along with the impressive accuracy and openness of real-time display advertising bidding platforms are two major catalysts for increased display ad spend.
