Guides
How-tos, explainers, and deep dives.
Adform Integration and Development: 3 Use Cases for AdTech Vendors, Agencies, and Publishers
Founded in 2002 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Adform has grown into one of the more prominent software vendors in the online advertising ecosystem. The platform serves both media buyers (advertisers and agencies) and…
The Anatomy of a Data-Management Platform (DMP)
Data-management platforms (DMPs) are widely used across the programmatic advertising ecosystem by advertisers, agencies, and publishers alike. They are complex pieces of software that incorporate many different…
Ad Serving: How Ad Servers Work, Their Components, and Their Role in Online Advertising
Since the beginning of online advertising over two decades ago, a number of technologies have emerged to solve the problems advertisers and publishers face and to improve the media-buying and selling process overall.…
The Main Technology Platforms and Intermediaries in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
Advertising before the Internet was a largely manual process — people created, configured, and delivered campaigns by hand. The Internet changed all of that, and today online advertising runs on a complex web of…
What Is an Agency Trading Desk (ATD) and How Does It Work?
With the rise of self-service programmatic ad-buying platforms, brands have become increasingly independent of agencies and their managed services. Today, most online — and some offline — media purchases can be made…
What Is Audience Extension and How Does It Work?
The online advertising industry has faced no shortage of headwinds in recent years — regulations like the GDPR, structural problems like banner burn and banner blindness, and the growing unreliability of cookies thanks…
How to Hire the Right AdTech Developers for Your Project
Ad fraud, the GDPR, and ITP are not the only problems AdTech companies must tackle today. Many are struggling with challenges tied directly to their core offering — their technology. Most AdTech companies encounter some…
Identity in AdTech: Understanding the ID Problem
When advertising moved online from the print world in the late 1990s, the biggest opportunity for advertisers was the ability to reach people on an individual basis. They no longer had to rely solely on contextual…
What Is a Data Broker and How Does It Work?
When data-privacy scandals make headlines, Facebook and Google tend to absorb most of the public anger. They are the familiar scapegoats whose practices get scrutinized by regulators and reported widely. But there is a…
What Is Print Programmatic and How Does It Work?
Programmatic technology has steadily expanded beyond its digital origins, moving into out-of-home, audio, and now print. This article explains what print programmatic is, how the process works mechanically, who is…
How Facebook's First-Party Cookie Pixel Works — and What It Means for AdTech
Cookies have long been the foundation of online advertising — driving targeted campaigns, enabling retargeting, and powering attribution. They remain the most common method of identifying users across the web and…
What Is Programmatic Audio Advertising and How Does It Work?
In 1993, an innocuous banner ad appeared on Wired.com — the modest beginning of display advertising. Programmatic technology arose shortly after to automate the buying and selling of that growing inventory, and there…
What Is Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) Advertising and How Does It Work?
The offline advertising industry is slowly but steadily catching up with technological innovation, introducing capabilities like geofencing and beacons to offer tracking and personalization that were considered…
First-Party vs. Third-Party Cookies: How They Work and Why It Matters
Cookies remember website configuration (e.g., language preferences), login details, and products added to the shopping cart — even after a user leaves a site. But because cookie files are widely used to collect certain…
How to Integrate a DSP with Ad Exchanges and SSPs
When most people in the online advertising world talk about integrating a demand-side platform (DSP) with an ad exchange or supply-side platform (SSP), they make it sound as if it's a matter of connecting two platforms…
What Is a Supply-Side Platform (SSP) and How Does It Work?
When publishers first began their exodus from print media towards digital, they started looking for new ways to generate revenue. The most intuitive model was the one they had already been using in print — advertising.…
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): What It Is and What It Means for AdTech and MarTech
For roughly two decades, concerns about online privacy have steadily built momentum. Consumers want faster page loads, less clutter, and — more than anything — meaningful protection of their personal data. The rise of…
MadTech Explained: 3 Use Cases for Marketers and Advertisers
Data is everywhere. The challenge for marketers and advertisers isn't collecting it — it's knowing how to consolidate and leverage it effectively. MarTech platforms use data to deliver personalized messages through…
The Different Types of TV Advertising Explained
Traditional terrestrial and cable TV are well past their heyday, trailing behind streaming media in reach, measurability, and content quality. Video-ad views on OTT (over-the-top) devices grew 63% year over year in Q3…
AdTech/MarTech Development Teams: In-House vs. Outsourcing vs. Specialized Development Partner
Prior to the year 2000, the online advertising and marketing industries were powered by creative thinkers and gifted copywriters. While there's still a need for those skills when crafting campaigns, the industries are…
What Is a CRM and How Does It Work?
Maintaining good relationships with customers is the cornerstone of every successful business, but for much of the pre-digital era, managing and tracking those relationships was fragmented and time-consuming. Companies…
What Is Behavioral Targeting and How Does It Work?
Publishers and advertisers have relied on behavioral data for years to improve the relevance and effectiveness of the ads and marketing messages they serve to online audiences. Understanding how that process actually…
What is Ad Verification and How Does It Work?
Ad fraud, misplaced impressions, and poor viewability collectively drain a significant portion of digital advertising budgets every year. Ad verification has emerged as one of the primary tools advertisers use to…
What is Contextual Targeting and How Does It Work?
In a post-GDPR landscape, with rules governing personal data collection, user consent, the right to be forgotten, and data portability all adding complexity, behavioral ad targeting has become genuinely difficult to…