The online advertising industry value chain

1. The Client demands the Advertising Agency to run an ad campaign.
2. The Agency tells its Trading Desk what kind of ad space to buy, according to the Client’s requirements regarding its target consumer.
3. The Trading Desk establishes a set of guidelines, and asks a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) to buy ad space according to these guidelines. DSPs are buying specialists, they run intelligent algorithms to pick the cheapest ad space relative to its quality.
4. The DSP keeps tracking all the ad spots that come up for sale on Ad Exchanges, establishes the value of every one of them, and bids for the most relevant ones. It uses data from various data providers to come up with its valuations.
5.  The Ad Exchange is an open platform that enables websites to place their available ad space for anyone to buy in an auction.
6. The websites themselves try to attract traffic. They receive traffic naturally, from ingoing links, search engine results, and returning visitors. However, they can also buy traffic from Traffic Brokers (for ex. Taboola and Outbrain, two « content discovery platforms »).

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