Buyer: This is the advertiser

The buyers operate on the demand-side of things, on a

DSP: Demand-Side Platform; used by buyers to define their campaigns, load creative assets, and manage bidding prices

From marketing side, buyer have:

• identified audience
• uploaded creatives
• bid prices

This is done through an agency or in-house team in what is called a Trading Desk

On the other side of the system we have the

Publishers: any site that shows ads to users. By showing ads, they monetize their content. They have the audience/users, and need to show them the ads. They are considered supply side, so they use

SSP: Supply Side Platform; used by publishers to list their available ad inventory, ad sizes and payment terms

The publisher relies on a ad server to provide ads to their users. The ad server communicates to SSP when ad is needed. SSP contacts an Ad Exchange to see what campaigns are targeting the users who is loading the ad.

Publishers can have direct contracts or agreements with certain advertisers giving them priority. This is called Programmatic Direct: the pool of advertisers is smaller.

A publisher can also have a private exchange, where they only offer ad impressions to preferred advertiser. They can restrict who have access to their ad inventory.

Another options is for the publishers to use their ad servers, or go out and use many ad networks and reseller networks.

Ad Exchange: where publishers can offer their ad inventory to widest range of advertisers and have transparency on prices. This maximizes revenue for publishers.

Ad networks are company that connect advertisers to sites with ads. Reseller Networks is where companies buy ad space in advance, and then resells it at higher price. Arbritrage is when resellers make money by purchasing low cost ad space, and selling at higher rate.

In the ad exchange, advertisers compete with each other through Real-Time Bidding (RTB). They bid on the CPM. The highest bid wins the auction.