What is a Supply-Side Platform?
The Supply-Side Platform (SSP) is a technological platform that represents the interests of the seller and sells advertising inventory. The mission of the SSP is to sell this advertising inventory at the maximum cost. The SSP is in constant interaction with the Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which transmits the advertisers' bids and requirements to the target audience to the SSP, as a result of which the winner of the RTB auction is determined taking into account the interests of the two parties.
How does an SSP work?
Every year, automation affects more and more advertising processes. Neither major brands nor smaller businesses have time to negotiate with individual websites. It is much easier to set the target audience to whom they want to show ads and determine the bids based on the ad budget. Therefore, SSP advertising is becoming increasingly popular — it saves advertisers time and money. If in the case of the classic media platform they set the prices themselves, here the rates are regulated by the market. In addition, SSP advertising allows you to display ads that may potentially be of interest to users. Advertisers get the opportunity to set different targeting options and decide who will see their offers.
SSP forms a contract with the advertising platform and places the special code on the website owners’ pages. When the user clicks on the link, the auction starts. The SSP platform collects information about the website itself, the content, and the website visitor (age, gender, location, interests, income, etc.) using cookies. For example, a person typed in the search query "tennis rackets". This is a good signal for advertisers in related topics that the user will click on an advertisement for tennis courses or sportswear. Then the companies offer their bids for showing the ad to a specific person. The advertiser whose bid was the highest wins and gets the ad space. The platform processes up to one million requests per second, so all the processes described in this text section occur instantly.
SSP Main features
The Supply-side platforms have several key features. Let’s name three crucial ones among them:
— Bidding. The auction model attaches importance to SSP, promotes transparency in the media market and allows advertisers to get a clear idea of the ad placement they are buying, and flexibly manage their campaigns and the audience coverage.
— Data-rich impressions. SSP organizes the data of publishers to offer accurate targeting options for brands and companies. With its help, publishers offer impressions with an extensive context based on user behavior, their similarities, and preferences.
— Data security. Privacy is becoming a central issue of digital advertising today. However, SSP has several features that can help in solving this problem. For example, it can create anonymous identities based on the publisher's data without using any personal information.
What is the difference between SSP and DSP?
The Supply-Side Platform (SSP) is a software technology that allows owners of individual websites or entire networks to sell advertising space and earn income from placing ads. On the other side of the market is the Demand-Side Platform (DSP) — a platform that unites publishers and allows them to buy out ad impressions for target users. The two technologies are in constant interaction so that both advertisers and webmasters achieve the desired goal.
SSPs have the same technology as Demand-Side Platforms or DSP, but they differ in their main users.
DSPs are designed to help affiliates find the most cost-effective ad impressions with the most correct targeting for their product, and SSPs are designed to increase the number and quality of these impressions.
If you are on the "offer" side of this advertising ecosystem, then you probably want to get marketers who will increase the number of impressions sold by you.
As long as you use only your proven methods to achieve these goals, SSP provides a more advanced and effective solution.
Advantages of Supply-Side Platform
— All the inventory is on one website. The SSP network allows you to track the effectiveness of ad placement and the exact cost of each impression, all in one place.
— The opportunity to work with a huge number of advertisers. At the same time, you do not need to conduct long negotiations with them since all the processes are automated.
— Control over the placement of ads. Website owners can monitor in real time who buys impressions from them, for what money, and also restrict access to the auction if they do not want to see ads such as online casinos, adult campaigns, or other topics.
— The ability to set the minimum impression price. But it is important not to overdo it here. If you set the bar too high, you may be left without profit at all, and the advertising space will be idle.
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