Real-time bidding

Real-time bidding (RTB), created by Jason Knapp, is a means by which advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via programmatic instantaneous auction, similar to financial markets.

Description

With real-time bidding, advertising buyers bid on an impression and, if the bid is won, the buyer’s ad is instantly displayed on the publisher’s site.

Real-time bidding lets advertisers manage and optimize ads from multiple ad-networks by granting the user access to a multitude of different networks, allowing them to create and launch advertising campaigns, prioritize networks and allocate percentages of unsold inventory, known as backfill.

Real-time bidding is distinguishable from static auctions by how it is a per-impression way of bidding whereas static auctions are groups of up to several thousand impressions at once.

Overall, when compared to static auctions, RTB is more effective for both advertisers and publishers in terms of advertising inventory sold.

This is because real-time bidding gives advertisers the ability to bid on one impression at a time, and select which impressions for which individuals they will pay for. Consequently, advertisers only buy impressions on screens when they really want to. This is equally as effective for publishers, who get top dollar for one impression.

See also

• Ad serving - technology and service that places advertisements on web sites.

External links

• Real-time bidding @ Wikipedia