What is mobile RTB? It’s a question we get often, and a question that we’ve been getting more frequently, in the wake of AppFlood’s launch of its global mobile RTB solution.
Don’t be surprised but believe it or not “RTB,” also known as real-time bidding, is a catch-all jargon that itself can actually mean a few different things, but generally real-time bidding can described as technology that drives the delivery of mobile ads quickly, efficiently, and accurately to mobile devices on a CPM (or CPA) user-acquisition model.
RTB’s role in mobile advertising
For those of you unfamiliar with RTB, real-time bidding was developed for cost-per mille (CPM) and cost-per acquisition (CPA) campaigns. While the bulk of mobile advertisers are performance advertisers who buy downloads, brands are catching the mobile fever thanks to the realization that Internet-connected users are spending more time on mobile devices.
But if you’re familiar with brands, you’ll know that it’s not always an app that they’re looking to promote in the market. Instead, brands seek to raise their brand awareness. In mobile ad speak, this means promoting brand campaigns on a CPM or CPA basis. And if you’re wondering, it’s the financial brands like credit card companies who want to pay per new registration and e-commerce sites that pay for every item added to the shop’s e-cart that might run a CPA campaign.
More importantly because CPM advertisers aren't interested in downloads, not to mention CPM campaigns are typically far more costly than a CPI or even CPC campaign, RTB gives more power to those brands looking to get a bigger bang for their buck.
Traditional mobile advertising requires advertisers to buy traffic in bulk with limited targeting capabilities – like buying users from China, using Android Jellybean, and on a tablet. Brands on the other hand look beyond acquiring a general demographic of users and understand that each type of user holds a different value to the advertiser.
This is where mobile RTB comes in to play. Mobile RTB ensures the quality of the traffic because of precise targeting capabilities, network efficiency (ensuring ads are delivered to devices), and the automated bidding on traffic (making the buying of traffic much more efficient and faster for the advertiser).
Understanding the mechanics of real-time bidding
To touch on the technicalities of RTB, the term itself is a general all-encompassing jargon for what’s actually comprised of multiple parts. Confusing I know, but bear with me.
To define RTB the technology encompasses multiple products: an ad exchange, supply-side platform (SSP), and demand-side platform (DSP). Although typically mobile RTB networks will offer one or two of the above products, whether it’s a SSP and ad exchange, DSP and ad exchange, or any of the above individually.
Defining the RTB products
For the sake of clarity, I’ve defined SSP, Ad exchange, and DSP for you:
Supply-side platform (SSP) – network of app publishers (those who display ads in their app in exchange for revenue)
Ad exchange – The technology (the brains) that facilitate the bidding (from DSP) and selling (from SSP) of mobile ads. This is where the platform decides which ad, when, where, and how to display the mobile ad.
Demand-Side Platform (DSP) – The DSP interfaces with agencies or advertisers, stores user targeting parameters set by these advertisers, and on behalf of the advertisers the DSP automates the traffic buying process.
While mobile ad networks won’t offer all three products, due to the complexity of it all, most will work with third-party RTB networks or utilize their existing network traffic and advertisers to fill in the gaps. This might mean that a DSP and ad exchange RTB network will integrate with a SSP to tap an existing third-party source of traffic; or this DSP/ad exchange might also tap into its SDK traffic to deliver brand advertiser’s ads.
An example of how mobile RTB works
To illustrate how RTB works with all of its three parts in play, let’s start with a tourism or hotel brand advertiser.
Say that a hotel brand connected to AppFlood’s DSP has sent AppFlood targeting parameters that include a male iOS users living in Beijing, China, who frequently travels, and has previously visited a travel blog or website.
When a user from Hong Kong, sometimes travels, visited their website and uses an iPhone 5S opened up an app (which is connected to a SSP mobile RTB network), the SSP will collect the user’s information and request an ad from AppFlood’s mobile ad exchange. The ad exchange will store, analyze, and deliver that user’s data to the demand-side platforms (including AppFlood’s own DSP and brand advertisers) that AppFlood has integrated. Then the DSPs, which hold targeting parameters from agencies and brands, will instantly bid on behalf of their relevant brand clients different prices for this user.
For instance the hotel brand might bid $2.00 for this Hong Kong user instead of $3.00 because the user doesn’t live in Beijing and doesn’t travel frequently. At the same time, a flight booking brand might bid $2.50 for this traffic based on the value they see in this user.
Once the bids have been submitted by the DSPs, AppFlood’s ad exchange will receive and analyze the bids and find the right match using our proprietary bid analyzer, and deliver the mobile ad that belongs to the advertiser who won the bid.
No comments:
Post a Comment