Ep 4: The ad tech map in one picture

Monday morning. A shoe brand sets aside ten thousand dollars for ads.

The ad tech map shows every company between that budget and your page.

The brand briefs its agency, which loads the budget into a DSP, a demand-side platform, the buyer’s bidding software. Now a reader opens recipes.example. Your page calls your ad server, the software that picks which ad fills each slot. It, or a header bidding script, asks SSPs for bids. An SSP, or supply-side platform, sells your ad space, often through an exchange, the marketplace where the auction runs. The SSP sends a bid request to many DSPs. The shoe brand’s DSP bids, say, three dollars CPM, and wins, so its ad loads. Money flows back the other way, and every hop keeps a fee.

Draw your own map today. Your ad server, every SSP, and the company that pays you.

Next, DSP versus SSP. The buyer’s robot and the seller’s robot.