
Historically online display advertising has been bought and sold using fixed price metrics. Search marketing brought with it a totally new method of buying, and then trading platforms, based on an auction model which gave buyers more transparency and huge efficiencies in performance and cost. Ad Exchanges and DSP’s are a new wave of technologies designed to apply the efficiencies of search marketing to display – all built on the same idea of auction based bidding.
We saw ad exchanges launch along with the introduction of supply and demand side platforms. Very quickly these evolved to support real time bidding (RTB), which allows for even greater buying efficiencies when used in the right way.

There is no doubt that electronically traded media is the future for display advertising. Right now the biggest challenge buyers face is understanding the different technology platforms in the market and knowing how best to fully harness their potential.