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Understanding This Digital Advertising Term Will Make You Smarter Than The Competition

Real Time Bidding (RTB) is the automated process that powers most of today's digital advertising. Yet few public affairs or campaign professionals understand how it works. In today's quick read, we'll put you ahead of the competition.

The Basics of Real Time Bidding

When you visit a website with ad space, RTB allows advertisers to bid for that space in the milliseconds it takes for the page to load. Think of it like a lightning-fast auction that happens before you even see the page.

The Step-by-Step Process of Real Time Bidding

1. You visit a website with available ad space
2. The publisher sends information about the ad space and visitor data to an ad exchange
3. The ad exchange notifies advertisers about this opportunity
4. Advertisers instantly evaluate how valuable this impression is to them
5. Advertisers submit their bids for the ad space
6. The highest bidder wins
7. The winner's ad appears on your screen
8. All of this happens in about 100 milliseconds (1/10th of a second) through the help of AI at every step

The Key Players in Real Time Bidding

• Publishers: Websites with ad space to sell
• Ad Exchanges: Marketplaces where ad inventory is bought and sold
• Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs): Tools advertisers use to buy ad space
• Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs): Tools publishers use to sell their ad space
• Data Management Platforms (DMPs): Systems that store and analyze user data

Why Real Time Bidding Matters In Your Work

RTB is the engine powering the vast majority of digital ad buying. It has transformed advertising from a human-negotiated process to an instantaneous, data-driven system that powers most of the ads you see online today.

If you understand the basics of RTB, you can win ads for your clients at the most efficient prices, reach targets the other side is missing, and stretch campaign dollars in ways that are unthinkable in traditional forms of advertising.

RTB may sound space-aged, but it's an example of where AI has already transformed our profession in ways we may not have even noticed.

Three Ways To Operationalize This Email

🔱  Review your last campaign and look for instances where RTB was used. If you bought digital ads, you probably used RTB without knowing it.

🔱  Review the inputs you used in the campaign to inform the RTB process. What KPIs were you bidding on, and did those KPIs align with your campaign strategy?

🔱  Click on any website and notice how fast the ads load. You just watched RTB in action.

🔱  If you're enjoying this content, please consider forwarding this email to a colleague or friend. If you'd rather not forward it because you think the content makes you seem smarter compared to that annoying co-worker . . . fine, but drop us a note and at least tell us that's why you didn't forward it.

🔱  If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up here to stay up to date on the latest developments in political technology.

🔱  If you'd like to learn more about how to use RTB in your work, contact us today.

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