Programmatic is ultimately the automation of buying ads largely powered with data, which is primarily done through ad platforms. This is an extension of the traditional direct buys done over the phone or in a non-digital form as it becomes data driven & real time via an auction process the same you see on Google / FB. It is largely bought on a dynamic CPM basis. Personally for me, anything automated through an auction process for buying ads is programmatic, so search/social can by definition considered "programmatic" but is often grouped in its own channels because of some legacy things, especially bidding types where its still common to buy on a CPC basis. Ultimately everything is becoming programmatic. First it was banners (display), then it became video / Mobile App & now you see all emerging channels like audio / native / CTV / OOH all offer programmatic buying. The only things that aren't will be traditional offline pieces like print. Platforms exists within the programmatic world and are normally labelled as a DSP or a Demand Side Platform. Google has DV360 as their enterprise solution & is the largest DSP globally: imagine Google Ads but on steroids with more than just Google inventory / tools. Amazon DSP exists and is fast becoming no.2. Other popular platforms include TTD (The Trade Desk), MediaMath, Adobe Advertising Cloud & Xandr Invest. If you want to learn more about programmatic, aside from trying to understanding r/adops or r/programmatic , there are decent courses on the Google Skillshop (choose the GMP ones) and TTD made their Edge Academy free 2 weeks ago. That is actually quite nice in understanding programmatic if you ignore some of their sales push. Answer from goodgoaj on reddit.com
Gwi
gwi.com › blog › programmatic-ad-buying
Programmatic Ad Buying: 5 Examples of Brands Getting it Right - GWI
January 22, 2025 - Buying ads programmatically led to an average conversion rate four times higher than those bought traditionally, while the campaign’s creative ads were twice as efficient as standard ads. A great example of a brand taking programmatic in a new direction is the non-profit organization, Amanda Foundation, which partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi to create a super personalized programmatic campaign.
Camphouse
camphouse.io › home › blog › what is programmatic media buying and how does it work?
What Is Programmatic Media Buying and How Does It Work? | Camphouse
February 17, 2025 - Examples of ad exchanges include Google Ad Exchange, AppNexus, and MediaMath. Open marketplaces are digital spaces where any advertiser can bid for ad space. They provide a broad reach, accessing multiple websites and apps. The buying process in open marketplaces is transparent, with advertisers bidding in real-time. Yes, Google Ads utilize programmatic technology, especially those on the Google Display Network.
Videos
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SmartyAds
smartyads.com › home › blog › campaign tips
11 Programmatic Advertising Campaigns Examples - SmartyAds
October 21, 2025 - This way, LiveRamp and Eyeota integration in SmartyAds DSP means that advertisers and media-buyers can access advanced segments for targeting and easily integrate their own first-party data to run ads effectively. You can modify your advertising message, placement, and frequency using programmatic advertising.
Adjust
adjust.com › glossary › what is programmatic media buying?
What is programmatic media buying and programmatic marketing | Adjust
RTB is considered to be a cost effective way to buy media with a large audience. Private marketplace (PMP): These are similar to open auctions, but PMPs have restrictions on who can participate. Only selected advertisers have access to PMPs on an invite-only basis. However, in some cases publishers may have a selection process which allows advertisers to apply for an invitation. Programmatic direct: This is when a publisher bypasses auctions, selling media inventory at a fixed cost per mille (CPM) to an advertiser (or multiple advertisers).
Digital Marketing Institute
digitalmarketinginstitute.com › blog › the-beginners-guide-to-programmatic-advertising
The Beginner’s Guide to Programmatic Advertising | Digital Marketing Institute
August 25, 2025 - Your ad could be brilliant, but if it’s not in the right place and targeted at the right people, your campaign will never reach its true potential. Find out what programmatic advertising is, targeting best practices and examine four brands doing it right.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/ppc › eli5: how does programmatic advertising work?
r/PPC on Reddit: ELI5: How does programmatic advertising work?
April 24, 2020 -
I hear about programmatic all the time, but it's still an enigma to me.
I understand it's digital advertising across multiple channels. Are there specific softwares that are used for this kind of advertising? Are there some companies that do it particularly well? What makes it different than running FB, Google, and other similar ad platforms.
Thanks!
Top answer 1 of 9
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Programmatic is ultimately the automation of buying ads largely powered with data, which is primarily done through ad platforms. This is an extension of the traditional direct buys done over the phone or in a non-digital form as it becomes data driven & real time via an auction process the same you see on Google / FB. It is largely bought on a dynamic CPM basis. Personally for me, anything automated through an auction process for buying ads is programmatic, so search/social can by definition considered "programmatic" but is often grouped in its own channels because of some legacy things, especially bidding types where its still common to buy on a CPC basis. Ultimately everything is becoming programmatic. First it was banners (display), then it became video / Mobile App & now you see all emerging channels like audio / native / CTV / OOH all offer programmatic buying. The only things that aren't will be traditional offline pieces like print. Platforms exists within the programmatic world and are normally labelled as a DSP or a Demand Side Platform. Google has DV360 as their enterprise solution & is the largest DSP globally: imagine Google Ads but on steroids with more than just Google inventory / tools. Amazon DSP exists and is fast becoming no.2. Other popular platforms include TTD (The Trade Desk), MediaMath, Adobe Advertising Cloud & Xandr Invest. If you want to learn more about programmatic, aside from trying to understanding r/adops or r/programmatic , there are decent courses on the Google Skillshop (choose the GMP ones) and TTD made their Edge Academy free 2 weeks ago. That is actually quite nice in understanding programmatic if you ignore some of their sales push.
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ELI5 version: when someone visits a website that has an ad unit on it (such as a google display banner), an auction occurs in real time to see who’s ad serves that person. There may be here hundreds or thousands of potential advertisers who could have their ad serve, but only one can win (because there is only one ad unit for this one ad impression). Using data such as IP address, locations, device type, browser, etc, each advertiser bids how much they are willing to pay to win the impression. The highest bid wins and has their ad served. This all happens in microseconds. The longer version: a great deal of display, native, and mobile app ad inventory is now available to buy programmatically. This means that instead of being exclusively available on a single ad network that handles both the buying and the selling, you have a vendor called a Supply Side Platform that handles the selling on behalf of the publisher, and a vendor called a Demand Side Platform that handles the buying on behalf of the advertiser. Let’s use one of the most common SSPs as an example: Google (this used to be called DFP). A publisher puts Google display inventory on their site via Google’s SSP. Now any DSP with access to Google SSP can bid on ad impressions on this publisher. So a user comes to this publisher, and now when the page loads they need to see an ad. Dozens of DSPs representing hundreds or thousands of advertisers get notified that this person needs to see an ad. This notification is called a bid request. It contains data useful to the DSP in determining how much that impression is worth for each is their advertisers. Such data includes IP address, device type, operating system, location, etc. their may even be cookie data that further helps the DSP look up additional info on the user. In any case, each DSP will take the data in this bid request and determine how much they are willing to bid for each of their advertisers. The highest bid will be accepted by the SSP, and the ad for that bidder will be served. This all happens in microseconds. It is a giant, high-speed auction. How is this different the big ad networks you are used to? In many ways. A traditional ad network would handle both the buying and the selling of ads. Generally they buy huge chunks of impressions from publishers at fixed CPMs, and then separately they fill those impressions with ads from their advertisers at higher CPMs, making money off the difference. Or if it is a CPC as network, making money off the difference between how much CPC they were pairs from the advertisers minus the CPM they paid the publisher. Google and Facebook are very different. To my understanding, google search doesn’t have much of any of an “auction.” Rather it looks at a shitload of data including CPC bid, keywords, qualify of the landing page, etc etc and then determines for each search what order it will serve its paid results in. Facebook claims to have an auction very similar to programmatic. However there are some critical differences. Most critically, Facebook handles both the buying and selling, so they determine both who needs to see an ad, and the CPM bid for each potential advertiser. The way they determine that CPM bid, supposedly, has to do with the click thru rate of the ad, plus some mysterious engagement and quality scores of each ad. The idea being that they are trying to align bids with ads that a most relevant to both the advertiser and the ad viewer. But who knows what the fuck is even real on Facebook, it’s all a black box and we have to take them at their word. This is my personal experience, but with one exception I have never been able to make programmatic ad buying work for a performance campaign. You will only be as good as your DSPs ability to correctly bid on the right impression, and I don’t see that happening. Usually the click thru rate is dog shit and the CPM is higher than I would pay on a normal direct ad network buy. The only time I’ve made a DSP work was when I worked for a mobile app developer that built its own DSP in-house. Because they owned the DSP, they ended up with an absolutely enormous graph of device IDs that they could cross reference with player lifetime value data in their game. In mobile app bid requests, device ID is an available data point and is way better at uniquely identifying a specific user than the data available via website bid requests. Because of this we could confidently predict the value of each bid request and make smart bids.
Spiceworks
spiceworks.com › spiceworks inc › articles › what is programmatic advertising? definition, types, channel, and advantages
What is Programmatic Advertising? Definition, Types, Channel, and Advantages - Spiceworks
March 25, 2025 - Definition, Components, Benchmarks, & Best Practices with Examples · Digital out-of-home is the digital and analytically superior evolution of the traditional out-of-home advertising. The traditional DOOH sales consisted of advertisers getting in touch with the network and agreeing on audience targeting, pricing, screen selection, etc., manually. Although programmatic DOOH may appear a bit inexplicable initially, it follows the same media buying ...
Eskimi
eskimi.com › blog › programmatic-advertising-examples
9 Must-See Programmatic Advertising Examples For Inspiration
May 17, 2023 - Programmatic Guaranteed: Programmatic Guaranteed allows advertisers to reserve ad inventory directly from publishers. Once they agree on the number of impressions that ads have to hit and a fixed price, the inventory is designated for a particular buyer and they are obliged to buy it.
Outbrain
outbrain.com › home › programmatic › introduction to programmatic advertising
Programmatic Advertising Explained [as Humanly as Possible]
September 30, 2024 - A health and fitness brand is targeting an audience of millennials aged 25 to 34 who want to stay fit and eat well. With programmatic advertising, they can tweak settings such as age, interests, online habits, and even location.
CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions
solutionsmedia.cbcrc.ca › en › news › interview-jeff-macpherson-what-is-programmatic-ad-buying
What is programmatic media buying? - CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions
Through the open market buyers can reach significant scale but are subject to the potential of buying fraudulent inventory. This process is meant to be more efficient and effective than standard IO based workflow. The connections are ‘always on' which takes the RFP and IO processes out of the workflow and allows for a continuous sales process technically speaking. Buyers can leverage their first party data or use third party data programmatically which allows them to target users further down the purchase intent funnel making this far more performance based.
Search Engine Journal
searchenginejournal.com › sej › programmatic advertising
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How Does It Work?
April 22, 2024 - Programmatic advertising, on the other hand, takes display media to the next level. Multiple platforms exist for programmatic, such as sell-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs), allowing advertisers to buy ad inventory across an open network of platforms.
Trackier
trackier.com › home › glossary › programmatic media buying
Programmatic Media Buying - Trackier
February 6, 2025 - In other terms, it is also known as spot buying. Programmatic Guaranteed: It is similar to a preferred deal but there is no auction bidding. The publisher and advertiser negotiate on a fixed price (CPM) for an ad space. Before understanding how programmatic media buying works, let’s read about its components briefly.
Amazon Ads
advertising.amazon.com › blog › programmatic-advertising
Programmatic Advertising - What It Is and How It Works | Amazon Ads
August 8, 2023 - A demand-side platform (DSP) is programmatic software for advertisers. A DSP helps facilitate media buying from numerous publishers through SSPs, ad exchanges, ad networks, and direct integrations. DSPs help brands and agencies (the demand side) determine which impressions to buy and at what price (the supply side).
Perion
perion.com › home › what is programmatic media buying: key concepts to know
What Is Programmatic Media Buying: Key Concepts to Know - Perion
August 17, 2025 - Various buying methods such as real-time bidding, programmatic direct, PMPs, and preferred deals offer different levels of control and premium inventory access. The benefits of programmatic media buying extend to both advertisers and publishers, ...
eMarketer
emarketer.com › home › guide to programmatic advertising: channels, ad types, service models, and players
Guide to Programmatic Advertising : How it Works, Ad Types, and the Latest Data and Trends
August 27, 2024 - This all happens in real time, making programmatic ad buying and selling faster and easier. Examples: AppLovin, TripleLift, InMobi, PubMatic, Google’s AdX
DSPolitical
dspolitical.com › home › the dspolitical blog › a guide to programmatic media buying: the types
A Guide to Programmatic Media Buying: The Types - DSPolitical
July 2, 2024 - By integrating programmatic advertising into your media planning strategy, you can reach your precise audience more efficiently and effectively. Utilizing RTB provides the scalability needed for large campaigns, while PG offers the certainty of guaranteed impressions, and PMP ensures premium ad placements through curated relationships. At DSPolitical, we act as a meta-DSP, simplifying the entire process of programmatic ad buying.
Strategus
strategus.com › home › strategus blog › programmatic media buying: all-in-one 2025 guide
Programmatic Media Buying: All-in-One 2025 Guide
August 28, 2025 - New to programmatic? This complete 2025 guide explains how media buying works, the tools you need, and how to get the best results.
Forbes
forbes.com › councils › forbesagencycouncil › 2023 › 08 › 28 › unleashing-the-power-of-programmatic-media-buying
Council Post: Unleashing The Power Of Programmatic Media Buying
August 13, 2024 - It involves using demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) that use formats and processes similar to Facebook and Google Ads. These platforms, such as the Trade Desk and OpenX (a premier and preferred supply-side programmatic partner of the Trade Desk, but there are several platforms on the market), give you access to databases where you can buy digital media yourself.
Teqblaze
teqblaze.com › homepage › blog › insights › 4 successful programmatic advertising examples you need to know
4 Programmatic Advertising Examples You Need to Know - Teqblaze
May 21, 2025 - The global consumer goods leader ... brand engagement and spur growth. For example, the Dove brand of Unilever launched a programmatic video campaign centered on body positivity....