What Really Happens While a Webpage is Loading

Though I provided a basic outline of programmatic buying in a previous blog post, I recently stumbled across a few interesting infographics compiled by Altitude Digital explaining more about programmatic marketing process and providing some key insights. The graphs are useful in helping to fully understand the programmatic buying concept. This is the second and final post in a two-part series looking at these informative images. See the first part here.

This 2013 infographic from Turn shows the life cycle of an online ad. I love this image because it helps consumers understand the technology behind ads they see online every day.

                     

• For example, let's say I (Olivia) click on a URL to look at a cooking blog website (We will call it Cooking Blog—capital letters always make things more official). 

(*Note: the "publishers" mentioned in the infographic are anyone who create and post content (from little blog creators to sites like Facebook) that collect online revenue.)

• Cooking Blog checks its own local ad server to see if there is an online ad bought by an advertiser that they can serve. If they do not have one, they go to an AdExchange, or a real-time auction space where publishers and advertisers can interact and buy and sell online ad availability.

• The AdExchange sends my user profile to several demand-side platforms (remember, my profile is anonymous! See this post for more information about my thoughts regarding the Internet, anonymity, and advertising). A demand-side platform is simply software that helps purchase ad space in an automated way across multiple publisher sites. DSPs are the "matchmaker" between ad space and specific user profiles. They also serve and track the ads.

• The DSPs add some additional data on to my profile to better determine if the characteristics of my user profile meets those specified in certain ad campaigns. The DSP also looks at the size of the ad or accepted types of ad formats to be sure the ad that will be served even fits that requirement. Obviously, an ad with video capabilities would not work well in a space that doesn't accept video ads.

• The demand-side platform uses its mathematical algorithm and looks at specific qualifications to evaluate the "value" of my user profile (whether or not it's worth it to bid on my impression). It relates this to the different advertisers (say, Cooking Product One, Cooking Product Two, and Cooking Product Three) bidding on my profile. This also includes the cost of my impression (how much my viewing of the ad is worth in actual dollars).

• This DSP information is submitted to the AdExchange.

• The AdExchange runs the auction using a second-price method, which means whoever wins the auction pays one penny more than the original bid of the second-highest bidder. For example, Cooking Product One may think my impression is worth $4.50, while Cooking Product Two thinks I am worth $4.00, and Cooking Product Three may bid $3.00. If Cooking Product One would win the bid, instead of paying their original price of $4.50, they would only pay $4.01 for my impression (Cooking Product Two's price + one additional penny).

There's no doubt that online auctions
are more efficient and less awkward than this experience.
Source: BurnAway

• The winning bid is sent to the publisher (Cooking Blog).

• The Cooking Blog server tells the web browser to show the ad and the advertiser's server sends the winning ad to the browser.

• The ad gets shown on the page I clicked on on Cooking Blog's website!

Now that you know some of the basics, try your luck on this quiz about the real-time bidding and programmatic buying process created by Altitude Digital. If you scored high, comment below and brag about it! Or let me know the things you learned from the quiz or are curious to know more about!