…and do others see this jump at midnight in their own timezone?
This question was asked on Quora.com, below is my answer.
I dug into this win price problem several months ago after noticing the same jump in spend at that hour. Rubicon is on Pacific time so we refer to this as the “9 O’Clock Bump” effect.
Dr. Richter pointing at a Dodo bird. “Adapt or perish”
After asking several DSPs about the problem we determined that it was, indeed, campaign budgets resetting combined with less-than-optimal pacing algorithms and in some cases lack thereof.
We’re in the process of finishing up some documentation on our pacing algorithm that does a pretty good job pacing to the needs of the campaign while considering the fairly predictable traffic pattern throughout the day. We’ll be putting this information out in the next couple weeks. Hopefully it will inspire some folks in the market to upgrade their systems and resolve some of this win price inefficiency. I’ll update post with a link to the document once we release it.
UPDATE: The document is finally out the door. You can read it here.
Mature Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) have conquered the primary requirements to being in business in the online ad space, including: campaign pacing, optimization of bids, campaign goals and budget allocations. The old guard is now well established. New DSPs, presumably with novel approaches to the market, may encounter some of these basic challenges. There are a lot of examples they can look at in the market for guidance. 
The primary customer of the Supply Side Platform is the publisher. Most features are geared toward publisher needs. Access to demand is the paramount feature. Maximizing publisher yield over the long-term is also critically important. Companies that were already yield optimizers have taken the lead in the online display SSP space.
In a typical RTB transaction there’s a user ID, pulled from the user’s cookie or some form of server side system, which is passed to the DSP from the SSP. That ID is, in most cases, the DSPs record locator for the user’s information. Most DSPs have a server side data store where this information is housed, updated and augmented from a variety of sources including data companies like Blue Kai and Excelate and their ilk. DSPs may also be collecting and distilling information based on bid request activity from that user (although most SSPs put language into the contracts governing the use of this “bid stream” data) or retargeting data gathered for their customers. This type of data system is generally referred to as a Data Management Platform (DMP) in the industry. While there are some stand-alone DMPs out there, more and more DSPs are integrating or building their own.
