Demand Side Platform – DSP Overview

Welcome to the Programmatic Ad Basic Course. In this lesson we start at the beginning with an overview of the Demand Side Platform, the DSP. Well Planned Advertiser is a DSP.

Let’s quickly review the 4 key components of the Programmatic ads system.

Supply Side Platform (SSP): This is where ads are delivered. From billboards to game apps, all ads are served on SSP. 

Demand Side Platform (DSP): This is where advertisers create campaigns with audiences, creative, budget, impression caps, and bidding instructions.

Ad Exchange with Real Time Bidding: This is the middle man. The SSP communicates availability and the DSP sends campaign information to begin bidding. 

The final component, but a major player in this system, is the Data Management Platform (DMP): This is a system that is used through-out as it connects data points on the SSP, recognizing viewers, while also used in the DSP to build audiences.

Now, with a basic understanding of programmatic advertising and the platforms involved, we will focus the rest of this lesson and this course on the DSP, the platform you will be using with Well Planned Advertiser. 

Before we dive into the technical aspects of using the DSP platform, I want to share the power of programmatic ads. Because this functionality has been beyond the reach of most businesses, whether we realize it or not, we’ve all become slightly programmed or conditioned to think of online marketing in a very limited way. 

DSP offers capabilities that go far beyond paid social or paid search ads. The biggest distinction in programmatics ads is the ability to have full control over your entire marketing strategy. With paid social and paid search ads, you are limited. You can find new leads and generate web traffic, but 90% of that traffic is lost. 

Think about how many website visitors you have in an average day, then think about how many leave their email or purchase a product. It’s typically less than 10%. Without retargeting, you’re losing the ability to nurture 90% of your warm leads. 

With programmatic ads, you can retargeting 100% of your web traffic! Think about what a game changer this is. You have multiple opportunities to nurture web visitors, reminding them of your brand, your product or your service. 

But it gets even better! Not only can you retarget website visitors, you can retarget them according to their browsing behavior. Whether you have 1 product or service, or you have 20,000, you can utilize the DSP to track and target according to how your web traffic is engaged with your website.

Think about that for a moment, and let me repeat: You can retarget 100% of your website traffic based on how they engage with your website. That’s why programmatic ads are a game changer.

In our next lesson, we will begin learning the technical aspects of the DSP by learning how to utilize pixels to track your website visitors.