SSP (Supply Side Platform)

291 Comments / Programmatic Advertising / By Content Team

Supply Side Platform

In the context of digital advertising, SSP stands for Supply-Side Platform. It is a technology platform used by publishers and website owners to manage and optimize the sale of their digital advertising inventory.

As an intermediary between publishers and advertisers, an SSP simplifies the process of selling ad impressions. It enables publishers to link their inventory with various ad exchanges, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and other purchasing platforms. Through integration with an SSP, publishers can expand their reach to a broader array of potential advertisers, optimizing their revenue by selling inventory to the highest bidder in real-time auctions.

How SSPs work:

Inventory Management: SSPs help publishers manage their ad inventory by organizing and categorizing available ad impressions. This includes specifying targeting options, ad formats, and pricing rules.

Real-time Bidding (RTB): SSPs enable publishers to participate in real-time bidding auctions. When a user visits a publisher’s website, the SSP sends information about available impressions to multiple potential advertisers through ad exchanges or DSPs.

Advertiser Demand: Advertisers submit bids for the available impressions based on their targeting preferences and campaign objectives. The SSP collects these bids and selects the highest bidder.

Ad Serving: Once the SSP selects the winning bid, it communicates this information to the publisher’s ad server. The ad server then delivers the ad creative from the winning advertiser to be displayed on the publisher’s website.

Reporting and Optimization: SSPs provide publishers with reporting tools to track the performance of their inventory. Publishers can analyze data such as ad impressions, click-through rates, and revenue generated. This information helps publishers optimize their inventory and make informed decisions about pricing and ad placements.

Overall, SSPs play a crucial role in the programmatic advertising ecosystem by connecting publishers with advertisers and facilitating the efficient buying and selling of ad impressions.

How a Supply-Side Platform (SSP) relates to other components in the digital advertising ecosystem:

Advertisers: Advertisers are the entities that want to display their ads and reach the target audience. They interact with the ecosystem by participating in auctions and submitting bids for available ad impressions.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP): DSPs are technology platforms used by advertisers to manage and optimize their digital advertising campaigns. They receive bid requests from SSPs, analyze the available impressions, and submit bid responses containing their bids for specific impressions.

Data Management Platforms (DMPs): DMPs are platforms that collect, analyze, and segment large volumes of audience data. SSPs may integrate with DMPs to enhance audience targeting capabilities. By leveraging DMP data, SSPs can offer more precise targeting options to advertisers, resulting in more effective ad campaigns and higher revenue potential for publishers.

Ad Exchanges: SSPs integrate with ad exchanges, which are online marketplaces where ad impressions are bought and sold. Ad exchanges facilitate the auction-based buying and selling of ad inventory in real-time. SSPs send bid requests to ad exchanges, which then distribute these requests to potential advertisers or their representative demand-side platforms (DSPs). Ad exchanges also receive bid responses from DSPs, which are evaluated by SSPs to determine the winning bid.

Supply-Side Platform (SSP): SSPs are technology platforms used by publishers to manage and optimize the sale of their digital advertising inventory. They receive bid responses from DSPs, evaluate the bids, and select the highest bidder to serve the ad impression.

Publishers: Publishers are the owners of websites, apps, or other digital platforms that offer ad space to advertisers. They provide ad inventory to the SSP, which includes available ad impressions that can be sold in real-time auctions.

This chart demonstrates the interactions between advertisers, DSPs, SSPs, and publishers in the digital advertising ecosystem, highlighting the role of the SSP as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers.

What Are the Main Features of an SSP?

User interface – allows publishers to leverage the SSP to their advantage as they sell impressions.

Analytics and reporting – enables publishers to get full transparency about the performance of their ad inventory, including fill rates, clicks, and impressions.

Header bidding – most SSPs incorporate header bidding functionality, allowing publishers to obtain bids from multiple DSPs, and manage their header bidding wrappers and demand partners.

Yield optimization – aims to increase revenue for publishers by improving fill rates, setting floor prices, and managing auction mechanics.

Inventory and campaign management – allows publishers to manage different types of ad inventory and block certain types of ads.

How Does Supply Side Platform Help Publishers?

Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) play a crucial role in the digital advertising ecosystem by helping publishers optimize their advertising inventory and maximize their revenue. Here’s how SSPs help publishers:

Centralized Management: SSPs provide publishers with a centralized platform to manage and control their digital advertising inventory across various ad networks, exchanges, and demand sources. This simplifies the process of managing multiple demand partners and campaigns.

Inventory Monetization: SSPs help publishers monetize their ad inventory by connecting them to a wide range of demand sources, including ad exchanges, ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and advertisers. This increases the competition for the publisher’s inventory, potentially driving up ad prices.

Real-time Bidding (RTB): SSPs often integrate with real-time bidding (RTB) systems, allowing publishers to sell their ad impressions in real-time auctions. This helps publishers obtain the highest possible price for each impression, as advertisers bid on impressions individually.

Dynamic Ad Allocation: SSPs use algorithms and data analysis to dynamically allocate ad impressions to the highest bidder, optimizing revenue for the publisher. This means that the most valuable ads are shown to the most relevant audiences, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions.

Ad Quality Control: SSPs offer tools to ensure that the ads served on a publisher’s website meet quality standards. This includes mechanisms to filter out inappropriate or low-quality ads, protecting the publisher’s brand and user experience.

Data Insights: SSPs provide publishers with valuable insights and analytics regarding their inventory performance, ad placements, audience engagement, and more. This data helps publishers make informed decisions to improve their advertising strategy and maximize revenue.

Ad Server Integration: SSPs often integrate with ad servers, which helps publishers streamline the process of delivering ads to their websites. This integration ensures that the right ads are displayed to the right users at the right time.

Yield Optimization: SSPs use advanced algorithms to analyze market trends, user behavior, and ad performance to optimize the yield for publishers. This means finding the right balance between the number of ads displayed, their placements, and the revenue generated.

Header Bidding: Many SSPs support header bidding, which is a technique that allows multiple demand sources to bid on ad impressions simultaneously. This increases competition among demand partners and can lead to higher ad prices for publishers.

Cross-Channel Management: Some SSPs provide tools to manage ad inventory across various platforms, including websites, mobile apps, and video content, helping publishers maintain a consistent ad strategy across different channels.

DSP vs SSP:

DSP (Demand-Side Platform) and SSP (Supply-Side Platform) are two essential components in the digital advertising ecosystem, serving different roles to distinct sets of stakeholders. Here’s a comparison between DSPs and SSPs:

Purpose: DSPs are technology platforms used by advertisers and their agencies to manage and optimize their digital advertising campaigns. SSPs are technology platforms used by publishers and website owners to manage and optimize the sale of their digital advertising inventory

Advertiser/Publisher Perspective: DSPs enable advertisers to purchase ad inventory across multiple publishers and ad exchanges. They provide tools for audience targeting, campaign management, bid optimization, and real-time bidding (RTB). SSPs enable publishers to monetize their ad inventory by connecting them with potential advertisers and maximizing revenue through real-time auctions.

Buying/Selling Process: DSPs receive bid requests from SSPs or ad exchanges, analyze available impressions, and submit bid responses containing their bids for specific ad impressions. SSPs receive ad inventory information from publishers, send bid requests to ad exchanges or DSPs, and evaluate bid responses to select the highest bidder for ad impressions.

Targeting Capabilities & Inventory Management: DSPs offer sophisticated targeting options, leveraging data and algorithms to reach specific audiences based on factors such as demographics, interests, browsing behavior, and more. SSPs assist publishers in organizing and categorizing their available ad impressions, specifying targeting options, ad formats, pricing rules, and controlling access to their inventory.

Advertiser/Publisher Control: Advertisers have control over budget allocation, campaign settings, audience targeting, and optimization strategies. Publishers have control over inventory settings, pricing, ad placements, and access to their inventory by specific advertisers or categories.

DSPs focus on the buying side of the advertising ecosystem, empowering advertisers to reach their target audiences effectively and optimize campaign performance. On the other hand, SSPs cater to the selling side, enabling publishers to efficiently sell their ad inventory, connect with advertisers, and maximize revenue through real-time auctions.

The widespread adoption of SSPs by publishers improves the quality of publisher-advertiser deals and enhances accountability in these relationships.

Similar to what DSPs do for advertisers, SSPs automate the redundant manual procedures prone to human error and streamlines the ad-buying process for publishers. Publishers don’t have to engage in direct negotiation with the salesperson and collect manual insertion orders. Instead, they leave the ad selling to a pre-configured automated platform.

SSPs offer superior options for user analysis, data profiling, audience management, and segmentation. Through SSPs, publishers can provide more detailed insights into their audience, enabling advertisers to precisely target their ad campaigns to the most suitable viewers.