Programmatic
Also called RTB, Real-time bidding.
Buying ad impressions through automated auctions rather than dealing with a publisher directly.
Programmatic buys scale and targeting; direct buys context and endorsement. A programmatic impression on a site costs a fraction of what that site charges for a sponsorship, and it is not the same product: the reader knows a newsletter's sponsor was chosen by the writer.
The tradeoff is fee stack and opacity. Between advertiser and publisher sit a DSP, an exchange, an SSP and often more, each taking a share; studies of the chain repeatedly find a substantial part of the budget lost to intermediaries before it reaches a publisher.
How LinkBourse handles it
Everything here is direct-sold: one buyer, one publisher, one price, one fee, both sides named on the order.
Terms it depends on
- CPM
- The price of one thousand ad impressions — the standard unit for buying reach rather than outcomes.
- ads.txt
- A public file at the root of a domain listing who is authorised to sell that site's ad inventory.
- Impression
- One instance of an ad being served — not necessarily seen, and not necessarily by a person.