How difficult it was for advertising campaigns to live before the advent of RTB advertising. To promote products or services, brands had to negotiate with different advertising networks and buy space for ads. Time was running out, money was lost, and managers were looking for potential traffic at random. It was a real quest. With the development of RTB marketing, ads began to be shown according to the interests of the target audience. Finally, the system earned a profit, not a loss!
How the world of RTB works and the role of the audience in it
What does RTB stand for in marketing? A simple abbreviation stands for Real Time Bidding or online auction. Three parties represent their interests at such auctions at once:
- the customer or RTB network that organizes the bidding;
- the owner of the site or the seller site, offering to “park” on its resource;
- An advertising network or DSP system is a platform that buys shows for its advertisers and collects their bids and creatives.
To participate in the auction, the site connects to the SSP platform with the installed code. This helps to conduct advertising bidding in automatic mode. What is RTB? This is a chance for all parties to keep up with the times, here and now to change their rates in accordance with the market situation. Marketing RTB has a positive effect on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
The bidding’s object is the privilege to promote certain services, goods on the sites. Who gets the royalty flush and takes away the rights of display? It becomes the advertiser who puts up the highest price.
Pros of an online advertising auction
This approach was invented by Admeld, which was acquired by Google in 2011. Since then, favorable conditions have been created for advertisers and digital marketing in general. Real time bidding has advantages over traditional “retro” promotion:
- increased click-through rate of ads;
- an opportunity for advertisers & arbitrageurs to choose an audience based on their interests
- demonstration of banners relevant to the subject of the site
- absolute security of users thanks to virtual metrics
- maximizing ad revenue.
RTB advertising is a fresh technology for buying & selling online ads. This is how ad bidding opens, in which the winner gets the right to show an ad to a specific user. It turns out that there is a purchase not of a place for promotion, but of the audience most interested in a particular product/service.
The bidding procedure is one important nuance
The auction takes place in seconds while your browser tab opens. Initially, the site collects information about the user using cookies. These can be early search histories, a social demographic “map”, geography, information about retargeting, etc. When a user opens the site, RTB marketing is launched & the trading bidding time immediately.
It takes a few seconds for an advertisement to be selected. There is only one condition: the best & highest bid for a specific target audience is assigned for the shows. The last stage & the user sees an animated banner, a static picture, a video presentation, a pop-up window with an advertisement on the screen. RTB advertising identifies users by such criteria:
- cookies;
- pixel tag;
- identifier on the mobile platform;
- browser;
- social network profiles.
Let’s say you’ve been looking for glasses, bags, swimsuits, and last minute tours for the beach season in online stores for some time. Most likely, RTB advertising appears before your eyes with the goods or services you’re interested in. This approach refuses not to plan the reserves of ads platforms on sites. It focuses only on impressions to targeted, hypothetical buyers.
RTB Trading Algorithms
Unlike buying space for standard online promotion, real time bidding shows what the user is interested in right now. This is the easiest & freest access to the target audience. It is only important to correctly set up targeting. There are no fixed prices here, here it’s like in a mini-casino: the bid is set by the advertiser himself.
What does the marketing RTB algorithm look like?
- The user visits the site of the publisher connected to the SSP.
- A request is sent to the system with the command to show ads. The resource transmits data about the page & the ad format to the system.
- The system also receives visitor’s data – their geolocation, query history, demographic characteristics.
- The SSP forms a lot for sale at the auction & determines the bidding time.
- A DSP system is used, through which advertisers make their bets.
- The SSP platform chooses the highest bid, indicating the winner of the auction.
- The demonstration of ads to site visitors begins.
Programmatic RTB provides a minimum threshold for the impression price. If no one overcomes it, then no DSP will win. Then the site itself “wins” by showing its own ads on an empty block. Despite the seven points of the algorithm, the process itself takes no more than 100-120 ms. This is enough time to open the web page.
There are certain rules
What does RTB stand for in marketing? This is a simple promotion of advertising through an online auction. It takes place on equal terms and fair rules for all advertisers. It’s important to avoid failures & work transparently, not to try to deceive the system.
To launch a programmatic RTB, advertisers must provide a portrait of the target audience.
After that, their task is to correctly target according to the main and secondary criteria (age, gender, income level, interests, key phrases or words). Each element of marketing RTB should react instantly. Ads become effective when the system collects more of the user’s data. Also, RTB marketing provides for the purchase of information from exchanges and aggregators (DMP suppliers) when you need to put together a complete puzzle about the target audience.
In what form to launch promotion through RTB marketing?
Many people wonder what ad bidding is & is RTB marketing effective? These questions are clearly answered by the advertising formats that are popular today. Various domestic and foreign services, technology giants Yandex, Google and VK work with them.
What is Real time bidding? It’s a fast process, but preparing for one is rather painstaking. Different formats of banners & ads are allowed to participate during the bidding.
Media programmatic RTB is aimed at recognizing a brand, company, product or service. It includes smart banners, image ads, interactive blocks. They look like product cards with a photo, price and a short description. Their main “trick” is in the dynamic adjustment for each guest of the site.
- Advertising with a standard design. Marketing RTB popularizes text & image ads with a simple design. As a rule, it’s created automatically, based on templates and layouts. The block itself is built into the size of the advertising space on the resource. Advertisers add links, CTA buttons, etc.
- Native design ads are an example of organically adapting text or image ads to your site. Its owner can pick up a set of elements, choose an image, a title. It includes a perfectionist and fits the ad unit perfectly into the design of the site using HTML & CSS settings.
- Video ads play a special role for RTB marketing in 2023. Short videos for promotion go into trends, show the greatest involvement of the public. This ad format automatically adapts to the size of the ad unit on the site.
What is the main advantage of promotion through RTB?
Real time bidding is beneficial to all participants. For example, the owner of the site “wins” profitably to sell all ad impressions. Visitors — see & find relevant ads and banners. The advertiser gets the fattest plus. What does RTB stand for in marketing to it?
- clear targeting & re-targeting of the certain audience;
- minimizing the number of ineffective impressions;
- increase conversions right before our eyes;
- RTB advertising is no longer an annoying factor, but useful for a certain audience
- minimum investment in the promotion of goods and services
- track bids & results during bidding
- optimization of the advertising budget
- easily launch a retargeting campaign.
In addition, marketing RTB is characterized by a low entry threshold.
Conclusions and perspectives
So, what is ad bidding? These are the latest technologies for selling advertising impressions at an online auction. A business gets an exceptional opportunity to reach a potential buyer and attract more users with relevant advertising.
Recently, media buying has been gaining ground. It began to resemble the online version of the financial market. And ad bidding has played an important role in this. He automated the process of media buying, which yesterday was started literally manually. Through real time bidding, buying/selling media space has been greatly simplified. Human intervention has now been reduced to a minimum, and there are almost no mistakes left in the negotiations. Mutually beneficial “negotiations” through RTB advertising turned out to be convenient for all parties. You can learn more about the benefits of advertising bidding on the HilltopAds platform. Here you’ll find answers to the most popular questions and find the key to a successful online business.
