Display advertising is one of the ‘oldest’ types of online advertising, having been around since the mid 1990s. Display ads come in the form of banners, in different sizes, which are served to online audiences via display ad networks. Google’s ad platform, called the Google Display Network GDN, is one of the most well known – according to Google, it has over 2 million websites and reaches more than 90% of people on the internet. But there are plenty of other display ad networks, including Yahoo, Bing, Conversant and dozens more.
Learn more about how display advertising works in our post about Native Vs Display Advertising. Programmatic advertising is not an ad network – rather it is an automated way of buying advertising space via algorithm based technology to get the most accurate ad placement in the fastest time at the best price. Programmatic advertising is sold via ad exchanges. Publishers offer ad space to be bought programmatically, and advertisers enter automated bids to buy programmatic ad space in real time according to advanced analytics that help determine where to place the ad and get the most impressions for the best bid. It’s all done in an instant on an ad exchange, of which there are dozens.
Here’s a deeper look at how programmatic advertising works. A key advantage of programmatic advertising is the automated, real time nature of ad buying. This makes the whole process faster and more efficient. With programmatic, all the manual work of buying ad placements, targeting and analyzing is done in an instant, via a central dashboard where the advertiser can manage and monitor their ad campaigns strategically and effectively. Programmatic removes the middleman, enabling advertisers to bid in real time for the best ad placement at the lowest price on numerous ad exchanges at once, using AI driven algorithms created to enhance reliability of results.