In the advertising technology ecosystem, an ad server is responsible for showcasing what kind of ads are showcased to a specific audience. Additionally, collects relevant metrics (impressions, clicks, click thru rates etc.)

Publishers, advertisers and ad agencies implement ad servers to deploy advertising campaigns. Demand Side platform and supply side platform incorporate ad servers for their marketing operations.

Brand safety can be defined as the practice to keep advertisers and brands safe from content that can potentially damage or harm the reputation of a brand.

Brand safety solutions help maximize the impact and the cost efficiency of your campaign.

Contextual targeting is the way to target your audience using specific topics and keywords. Contextual targeting uses real-time content instead of cookie-level data to target market-specific audience sets.

Web page content and ad inventory are evaluated based on many different factors such as brand safety, keyword sentiment, suitability, and contextual relevance.

A demand-side platform (DSP) enables advertisers to buy advertising inventory across different domains, apps, and video platforms.

DSPs are connected to an advertising exchange. An advertising exchange enables DSP to connect to a marketplace. Through the marketplace, users can buy specific ad inventory.

The buying process used to be facilitated by humans but with the advent of machine learning technologies, advertisers are able to bid on ad inventories in real-time. DSPs have helped facilitate an efficient means of buying ad inventory, optimization of ad spend, and real-time analysis of campaign performance.

DSPs are used in the programmatic buying realm and they work in tandem with an SSP (Supply Side Platform).

Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) is an advertising tool that enables advertisers and brands to launch different types of advertising campaigns.

The three main different types of advertising formats are:

• 1. Display Advertising
• 2. Search Ads
• 3. Video Ads

Using Google ads advertisements across different domains, YouTube channels, and YouTube videos can be deployed

Header bidding is an advanced method of programmatic advertising where publishers have the opportunity to offer inventory multiple ad exchange before making a call to an ad server.

By letting multiple DSPs bd on a the same inventory made available by a specific publishers this makes the publisher to make money.

The reason why publishers like this method is because the opportunity to control the number of impressions that they are making available to the advertiser. Through the header bidding method the publisher has complete control of the inventory on a pre-impression basis and gives the idea of how much set of impressions are worth.

The biggest problem that is faced with header bidding is that the page load takes time. So the ads can take time to load.

Managed Placements in Google Ads allow you to choose targeted websites and apps that are relevant to your business.​

For example, if you were in the travel industry, you could use Managed Placements to place ads on platforms like TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Travelocity. These sites have visitors interested in traveling, which is an interest that would likely match your business. The user can place an ad either in terms of a display or a video ad.

The main advantage of managed placements is that they help you reach your target audience more effectively than standard text ads.​

The pre-approved locations are contextually relevant based on the advertiser’s campaign intent. Managed placements are an efficient way for companies who want to keep ads easy, simple, and less time-consuming while Google manages everything else that matters.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is the process of buying and selling ads in real-time on a per-impression basis. In the RTB process, a DSP, an ad exchange, and an SSP are involved. Through the RTB process, the advertiser can bid on specific inventory that they would like to purchase from a specific publisher. This is done in an instantaneous manner.

The pricing is done on a CPM (Cost per Mille) basis. There is an auction process put in place where the highest bidder gets access to the ad inventory. The winning bidder’s ads are instantly loaded onto the publishers’ site. This whole process lets a few milliseconds finish up.

It is important to remember that RTB is a type of programmatic advertising. Not all programmatic advertising uses RTC. Some programmatic advertising technology sells publisher inventory at a fixed price instead of an open-auction concept.

A supply-side platform (SSP) is an advertising technology platform that enables digital media owners to sell their inventory to advertisers and marketers. SSPs and DSPs play a key role in the programmatic buying ecosystem.

An SSP platform like a DSP is connected to an exchange. Through the exchange, the SSP has the capability to understand the bid range, make available a specific set of ad inventory on the publisher’s website and get a deeper understanding of the target audience.

An SSP helps a publisher sell their ad inventory to a number of buyers at the highest possible price.

The advertising ecosystem can be complex and confusing. Fortunately, the SSP side is straightforward and easy to integrate.

Sentiment analysis applies NLP (Natural Language Processing) techniques to determine whether the data is positive, negative, or neutral. In other words, sentiment analysis is the process of understanding and detecting specific sentiments associated with a video, podcast, or text-based domain.

At AdSkate, we score a body of text, video, or audio segment on a scale of 0 to 1.

0 – Extremely Negative

0.5 – Neutral

1- Positive

The user can use this data to make a determination whether to allocate advertising dollars to that specific media channel.

The YouTube platform is powerful and there are many different places you can advertise your brand on YouTube. The different ways to create an ad format on YouTube within Google Ads or Dv360. They are as follows:

• Trueview - TrueView is a YouTube video ad format that gives a viewer the option to skip an ad after 5 seconds of viewing it.
• Pre-Roll - Pre-Roll ads are a YouTube video ad format that is commonly 15, 30, and 60-second ads.
• Bumper Ads - Bumper ads are a short video format that lasts for 6 seconds or less that loads before the YouTube video selected to watch

Based on your campaign objective you can select one of the following:

Trueview Ads: Ads can be showcased on GDN (Google Display Network) in addition to appearing on YouTube. There are two types of Trueview Ads:

• In-Stream Ads - In-Stream Ads that play before, during, or right after your Youtube video has finished playing. If you do decide to select in-stream ads you can include a call to action that you can personalize to fit your messaging. Brands and advertisers should keep in mind that users have the capability to skip the ads 5 seconds in. So the messaging has to be concise.
• Discovery Ads - These are ads that show up on the side rails on the YouTube search result page. The major difference between In-stream ads and discovery ads is that for discovery ads businesses get charged each time a user clicks on them, unlike in-stream ads where a brand or an advertiser gets charged if their ads get viewed for more than 15 seconds.

Pre Roll Ads – The user cannot skip the ads. The ad can appear before the video starts or in the middle or the end of the video. The video ads can usually be 15 seconds long. For a pre-roll ad ensure that you have a call to action and make it easy for the viewer to learn more about your brand.

Bumper Ads: They are similar to pre-roll ads where the user cannot skip the ad. The ads usually land up being 6 seconds long and play directly before the video on YouTube. Bumper ads are great for brand awareness and are not best suited if you are trying to promote a product or sell something that is information-heavy. The advertiser has to make sure that their ads are concise and stick to the narrative.