What is Real-Time Bidding and Why is It Important?

In this video, Whitney takes you through what real-time bidding is and why it is important to publishers. Real-time bidding is a server-to-server integration option for network buyers that allows networks to evaluate and bid on each available impression, and is available to any ad exchange buyer that has its own ad server or bid engine. This allows programmatic auctions to happen instantaneously; once an advertiser wins a bid, an ad is displayed immediately on a publisher’s website. Anyone who is participating in a programmatic ad auction is using real-time bidding, including both programmatic buyers and sellers. Because Google’s RTB uses real historical data, publishers should be aware of how their historical data can be affected by the ads they put on their site. It’s important to be careful about who you let set up your ads. Publishers can use RTB data to their advantage by considering what type of data advertisers use to bid on the ad spaces on their site, such as demographics, geographic location, and device type. Publishers can use this information to adjust their ads based on these variables to increase advertiser bids when they know the demand is higher for certain visitors. Publishers can test multiple variables like this themselves; however, to truly test even a few of these variables on a per-user, per-visit basis would take a huge team and a lot of time to understand the results and implement changes. Additionally, since how advertisers bid is always changing, the tests have to change as well. This is where a product like Ad Tester comes in handy--it can easily test multiple variables at one time and adjust a website’s advertisements instantly, based on the visitor.