Display advertising is a fancy name for banner ads – yes, those banner ads, the ones you see all over the internet.

Simply put, a banner ad is an advertisement displayed on a web page. Chances are you’ve seen a few – display ads appear across more than 2 million websites and more than 650,000 apps on the Google Display Network. That’s just Google. There are many other exchanges as well as direct deals with website publishers.

How Programmatic Display Advertising Works

To understand how programmatic advertising works, you need to know the technologies that are used when buying ad inventory.

DSP

Demand-Side Platforms

These platforms allow you to buy ad space via ad exchange (i.e. Google Ad Manager) which feature ad inventories from website publishers.

SSP

Supply-Side Platforms

These platforms are basically the side of the publishers where they manage and offer ad space to advertisers and other interested parties.

DMP

Data Management Platforms

Platforms that enable organizations to gather and manage user information for the purpose of marketing like programmatic display advertising.

Through these technologies and artificial intelligence, it becomes possible to automate the process of ad purchasing and bidding. It’s simply a smarter solution to delivering relevant ads to users.