Banner Ad: Please Fix Your Pacing Algorithm
Decorative Header Image

Tag Archive for RTB

| March 13, 2013
No comments

What are the most important KPI’s to monitor when launching a proprietary demand side bidder?

What technical, operational and campaign performance [bidder] KPI’s should be considered when ramping up, and are there any industry benchmarks?
This question was asked on quora, below is my answer.

Some bidder KPIs can be monitored with tools like graphite (not angry birds).From a technical perspective you’ll want to measure how many different types of inventory you support: mobile, app, web, video, facebook ads etc… You’ll want to track how many SSPs you’re integrated with and how many impressions are available to you. You should look into creating a feature matrix and decide which advertising features you and your customers find most important.

On the operations side you’ll want to make sure your bidding system is responding to bid requests quickly. The round-trip time for a bid response, from an SSPs perspective, should be no more than 100ms – and even that is pushing it these days. Your internal bidding algorithm should probably make a decision in less than 30 or 40ms. This allows about 60ms for network latency between the bidder and the SSP. Some SSPs have DSP latency monitoring available. This type of monitoring will give you insight into what the SSP is seeing. Read more

Category: Free Ideas | Tags: , , , , ,
| March 13, 2013
No comments

How do SSPs work with Google Ad Exchange?

This post is getting old and might not be as relevant today. If you are looking for information on Google’s Exchange Bidding program you might check out this question on Quora.

I am not clear if SSP send a impression to a ad exchange and get ad from it, and how it works? I know ad exchange send a request to DSP then DSP send back response. But how SSP work with adx?
This question was asked on quora, below is my answer.

Ad Exchange nested in the Lumascape

Luma creates two distinct categories. One for Exchanges and another for SSPs.

In its purest form an SSP would only send bid requests to DSPs. Google’s Ad Exchange actually behaves like an SSP in this regard. The Ad Exchange, however, does not behave like a DSP. It does not receive bids from SSPs, nor would it bid on them if it did. Ad Exchange receives inventory via a traditional ad request using an ad tag.

Online advertising has very few companies filling a single role, such as the role of SSP. Most SSPs are also in the yield optimization business. In cases where a yield optimization platform runs an impression through their SSP technology and doesn’t receive a bid that wins the impression, it’s possible that the impression may be sent to Google’s Ad Exchange via an ad tag redirect.

In some cases the publisher may even be responsible for such an occurrence. The publisher might have a pass-back tag set up with their SSP which, in the event that there’s no winning bid, redirects traffic back to the publishers adserver which, in turn, would redirect the impression to Google.

Google does have DSP technology, but it’s not AdEx. It acquired a DSP company called Invite Media in 2010.

Save

Save

Save

Category: Working On It | Tags: , , , , ,
| March 6, 2013
No comments

Do DSPs provide advertisers with more data…

… than when purchasing through an ad exchange or even using an ad server? I am tasked with helping to expand my company’s online marketing, the options we are looking at are essentially 1) using an ad server to manage ‘private’ media buys 2) using an ad exchange like OpenX Market or 3) using a DSP. One major factor in this decision is the amount of data we can collect in order to optimise media buys.
This question was asked on Quora, below is my answer.

In the current marketplace a DSP is going to be able to give you more insight into your buys across many exchanges and SSPs. They are built from the ground up to cater to the needs of buyers.

Data

You’ll want to find a DSP that can work with many SSP and exchange’s private marketplace technology stacks. You may even find yourself using an SSP’s interface to place orders with particular publishers. Those deals are likely to be executed through the SSP/DSP technologies, so you’ll still need your DSP to act as the buying agent once the deal is done.

Since data collection is one of your primary needs, you might consider using a 3rd party ad server if the DSP you’re working with doesn’t have one that suits you. You can use an ad server as a service or set aside some hardware and install one on your own.

Category: Working On It | Tags: , , , ,
| February 4, 2013
No comments

Why does the average RTB win price jump up significantly at midnight EST?

…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.

Richter's Dodo didn't fix his algorithm, it's causing a win price jump

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.

Category: Working On It | Tags: , , , , ,
| January 29, 2013
No comments

Which are the main challenges in real-time bidding facing Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) today?

[For demand side platforms,] is it the optimization of the bids, the allocation of budgets, managing potential conflicts between advertising campaigns from multiple customers and buying data? Or is it more related to other issues such as customer relations and getting ad networks out of competition?
This question was asked on Quora.com, below is my answer.

Demand Side Platform (DSP) ChallengesMature 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. Read more

Category: Working On It | Tags: , , , ,
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »