Are you looking to automate your ad bidding process and streamline your campaign management for multiple ad campaigns? If yes, a demand-side platform (DSP) is what you need.
But what is a DSP? It’s the type of programmatic advertising platform you need to replace manual ad buying and manage multiple ad campaigns simultaneously across different platforms.
A DSP connects advertisers to digital publishers with ad inventory that meets their requirements through ad exchanges to facilitate faster and more cost-effective ad purchases and campaign management.
These platforms allow real-time bidding (RTB) and present all ad campaigns on the DSP dashboard containing multiple tools to help you manage, optimize and track them. Besides, you can assess the performance and optimize campaign strategy from the dashboard.
So, how can you use DSPs to gain a competitive advantage? Here are four steps to get you started.
1. Choose a Target Audience
The goal of advertising using a DSP remains the same — to reach the right audience with the right ads — but it boosts efficiency and improves your ability to scale. Targeting helps you increase the click-through rates (CTRs) of your ads. It also maximizes your advertising ROI by ensuring your automated ads reach relevant audiences.
The best DSP offers unique audience-targeting solutions and access to a database of publishers with ad inventory on websites or mobile apps your target audience uses.
When choosing the right target audience for your ads, use data you already collected on them, such as:
- Demographic information
- Website interactions
- Browsing history
- Buying habits
- Location
You’ll then use this data to create targeted ads that align with your campaign objectives. Upload your audience preferences to your DSP to determine the right ad exchanges to place your bids.
The best DSPs also allow you to narrow your targeting scope to specific hours, devices and browsers where your ads can appear. You can also set your budget and impression cap to improve targeting.
2. Let the DSP Evaluate Placement for You
With the targeting scope for your ads determined, you can sit back and let the DSP take over. At this point, the DSP assesses ad potential in real time to determine where to place your bid. It searches for inventory on the most relevant and least expensive websites and apps.
Programmatic ad exchange platforms are the marketplaces where publishers post their ad space inventory and prices. They use supply-side platforms (SSPs) to manage the inventories, and DSPs bid for these ad spaces. An automated auction process eliminates manual ad deal negotiation through real-time bidding (RTB).
Most DSPs scour multiple ad exchanges to maximize your geographical reach and diversify your ad-buying strategy. They deliver the lowest possible publishing prices for effectiveness and profitability.
They automatically filter out publishers not in your price range and those whose apps and websites are irrelevant to your target audience. The goal is to ensure every ad slot you purchase gets you maximum impressions and engagement.
While evaluating the best placement for your ads, DSP platforms also analyze inventory from various publishers to find those that meet your requirements and settings and are likely to deliver the most impressions.
3. Bid for the Best Inventory
When the DSP determines the best ad placement — accounting for suitable publishers and high impressions — they move to real-time bidding. The DSPs perform real-time analytics to determine the ad impressions of specific inventories based on relevancy and how well they meet your audience criteria.
They use a bidder to place your bid against other advertisers. As with any other bidding process, the highest bidder gets the ad space on the publisher’s website.
The RTB process happens in milliseconds while a webpage is loading. Three platforms facilitate the bidding process:
- Ad exchanges: These act as the cashier that facilitates transactions between advertisers and publishers.
- The demand-side platforms: Advertisers place their bids through the DSP platforms.
- The supply-side platforms: Publishers accept or reject your bid through the SSPs.
The bid prices are set and negotiated on the cost per thousand impressions. This pricing means you pay for the number of times, in thousands, your ad is seen. When negotiating, the DSP considers your maximum bid amount and the maximum number of impressions you want to receive.
Automating the bidding process reduces the time to close ad deals and allows you to maximize your ad spend.
4. Publish Won Ads and Gather Data
The final step in DSP advertising is getting your ad out there. Once the DSP wins the bid, it displays the ad on the publisher’s ad space on an app or a website. Most DSP platforms also have a campaign tracker that measures:
- Page views
- Engagement
- Website traffic
- Ad impressions
- Click-through rates
You can analyze this data to determine campaign performance and ad effectiveness. You can also integrate your DSP with third-party data analytics tools for more comprehensive insights.
These insights enable you to scale your ad campaigns in real time. Based on the insights, you can immediately take down low-performance campaigns and reallocate your ad spend to high-performance campaigns.
Most DSP platforms will also help you produce custom and accurate reports from different ad exchanges and multiple ad campaigns across different networks.
Maximize Your Next Ad Campaign With Emodo’s DSP
Emodo’s DSP is a reliable demand-side platform for advertisers that will help you automate your ad-buying process and streamline the management of your ad campaigns. Our unique consumer research technology, Emodo Audiences, ensures you effectively reach your audiences.
We also help you provide them with rich and exciting ads using the latest artificial intelligence and augmented reality technology. Through our platform, you can create, optimize and manage your ad campaigns across various platforms and justify your ad spend with unmatched speed and accuracy.
Contact us today to maximize your digital ad spend and save time used manually bidding for ad space. You can also reach out to us if you need clarification on how Emodo’s DSP can help you maximize the returns of your next ad campaign.
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