Yes. The vast majority of them do. You need to know the ad network the site is using, and then use a DSP that serves on that network. i.e. if you see DoubleClick, you can serve through Google Ads without any other seat license. If you see another one, you may need to have a trade desk / etc. seat to serve. Then you create a whitelist (i.e. only serve ads on this particular site) and it'll run. Keep in mind, sometimes some sites only allow ads from direct purchases (very common for industry organizations and things like that). So in that case, a DSP won't be able to serve. Answer from OddProjectsCo on reddit.com
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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.
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Webology
webology.io › home › blog › where do programmatic ads show? 5 digital spaces unveiled
Where Do Programmatic Ads Show? 5 Digital Spaces Unveiled
August 18, 2024 - Another place where programmatic ads appear is mobile apps. For instance, you might have seen ads appearing after every level on a gaming app such as Candy Crush. Another example would be an ad that appears on a utility app such as Google Calendar ...
Price   $$$
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People also ask

What is the difference between digital advertising and programmatic advertising?
Digital advertising encompasses all forms of online advertising, including display, social media, and search engine marketing. Programmatic advertising is a subset of digital advertising that uses automated technology and data-driven algorithms to buy and place ads in real-time, often across multiple platforms.
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stackadapt.com
stackadapt.com › resources › blog
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How It Works
How do you learn programmatic advertising?
If you want to get started with programmatic advertising but don’t know where to start, visit the StackAdapt Academy to enroll in free programmatic advertising courses and certifications.
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stackadapt.com
stackadapt.com › resources › blog
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How It Works
Why is it called programmatic?
It’s called programmatic because the ad buying process is automated. Programmatic advertising uses data-driven technology and algorithms to streamline ad placement, targeting, and optimization, making the process faster and more efficient than traditional advertising methods.
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stackadapt.com
stackadapt.com › resources › blog
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How It Works
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HeyTony
heytony.ca › home › blog › what are programmatic ads? a beginner’s guide to smarter digital advertising in 2025
What Are Programmatic Ads? A Beginner’s Guide to Smarter Digital Advertising in 2025 - HeyTony
June 27, 2025 - When asking what are programmatic ads, it’s important to know that they span a wide variety of formats and channels. Display Ads – Banner ads on websites or mobile apps · Video Ads – In-stream or out-stream ads shown before, during, or ...
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AppsFlyer
appsflyer.com › appsflyer homepage › reports and guides › media buying on autopilot: the ultimate guide to programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising - The complete guide | AppsFlyer
September 15, 2024 - Programmatic video advertising reached about $62.96B in 2022 and is projected to grow to $74.88B in 2023. There are three main types of video ads available to advertisers. In-stream video ads are shown within the video player.
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StackAdapt
stackadapt.com › resources › blog
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How It Works
December 4, 2024 - CTV is one of the fastest-growing ad channels and will account for nearly 1 in 10 US dollars spent on digital advertising in 2025 (90% of which will be transacted programmatically). DOOH advertising uses digital billboards, signage, and screens to show ads in high-traffic areas.
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Eskimi
eskimi.com › blog › how-programmatic-advertising-works
How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?
May 24, 2023 - Advertisers can be brands, agencies, or individuals who want to promote their products or services through programmatic advertising. They have their campaign objectives, target audience, a vision for specific advertising channels, and ad creatives that they want to use. Publishers are media owners, e.g., owners of websites, mobile apps, or other digital platforms where ads are displayed.
Find elsewhere
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Socialfly NY
socialflyny.com › home › the ultimate guide to programmatic advertising
The Ultimate Guide to Programmatic Advertising | Socialfly NY
April 21, 2025 - Your ad is shown to the right person. If your bid wins, your ad is instantly displayed to that user. You didn’t have to manually place the ad, negotiate a rate, or select the website. The software handled all of it at lightning speed. ... Imagine you’re a skincare brand launching a new anti-aging serum. You want to target women aged 35–55 who are interested in skincare, beauty routines, and healthy living. You plug that audience into your programmatic ...
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Publift
publift.com › home › adteach › what is programmatic advertising? how does it work?
What Is Programmatic Advertising? How Does It Work? | Publift
It’s worth noting that the entire process takes milliseconds, which allows the ad to appear on the webpage as the page loads on the user’s device. The process is repeated whenever the user visits the pertinent website or mobile app or refreshes the page. Programmatic platforms are software solutions, such as Publift’s Fuse platform, that help with programmatic advertising.
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War Room Inc
warroominc.com › institute-library › blog › what-is-programmatic-display-advertising
What is Programmatic Display Advertising?
October 16, 2024 - Programmatic banner ads can be static or dynamic, and they appear in a variety of sizes and placements all over the internet. They’re found most often in the headers, footers, and sidebars of the websites you visit. Static ad content refers ...
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Camphouse
camphouse.io › home › blog › programmatic advertising: how it works and why it’s worth using
Programmatic Advertising: How It Works and Why It’s Worth Using | Camphouse
September 4, 2025 - Targeted video ads on YouTube are a prime example of programmatic advertising. These ads are shown to users based on their viewing history, demographics, and interests.
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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 - On the other hand, programmatic advertising refers to buying and selling ad space, whether for display ads, native ads, or other digital advertising formats. Display ads are the visual content audiences see on websites, including images, videos, ...
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Setupad
setupad.com › home › ad formats › what is programmatic display advertising?
What is Programmatic Display Advertising?
September 25, 2024 - Programmatic display advertising refers to using this automated technology to buy and display ads on websites, apps, and other digital platforms. Ads are shown to users based on various targeting criteria (e.g., demographics, behavior, interests) ...
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Big Sea
bigsea.co › home › fresh ideas › what is programmatic display advertising?
What is Programmatic Display Advertising? - Big Sea
September 29, 2025 - Break it down by channel, and it’s even more extreme. Almost 90% of digital display ads are placed programmatically. Meanwhile, programmatic ads shown on connected TVs (through apps like Hulu and Roku) broke $6 billion in revenue in 2019.
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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 - Bid requests are sent to header bidding partners. The winning header auction bid competes with other demand services on the ad server. The publisher’s ad server determines the winning bid based on price and priority. The winning bid is selected. The advertiser’s ad server delivers the ad. The winning ad is served on a user’s device. Two main kinds of service models can be found among the major ad tech vendors, as explained in EMARKETER’s Programmatic Advertising Explainer:
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Cardinaldigitalmarketing
cardinaldigitalmarketing.com › home › beginner’s guide to programmatic display advertising – everything you need to know
Beginners Guide to Programmatic Display Advertising
July 31, 2023 - For instance, you can use AdWords, Analytics, and DoubleClick (Google’s programmatic advertising platform) to set up an attribution model to see how each programmatic advertising channel aligns with your customer’s journey. One of the major issues with traditional advertising channels such as AdWords and Bing is that they have their own network of sites where your ads are displayed. For instance, when you run a display campaign on AdWords, your ads will only be shown on Google’s partner websites.
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WebFX
webfx.com › home › blog › marketing › programmatic vs. display ads: definitions and differences
Programmatic vs. Display Ads: Definitions and Differences
Many brands rely on the best programmatic advertising companies to handle these campaigns efficiently, leveraging their expertise and access to advanced tools for optimal results. This differs from the traditional methods of negotiating with human representatives and manually requesting individual ad placements. Display ads are visual-based digital ads.
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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
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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.
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Agilityads
agilityads.com › blog › what-are-programmatic-ads
What Are Programmatic Ads & How Do They Work? - Agility - Precision Brand Advertising
Programmatic ad campaigns can be found on various platforms, including connected TV, mobile devices, video content, social media, and more. Video ads are one of the largest areas of programmatic ad growth, making up more than half of programmatic ...
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Instapage
instapage.com › blog › programmatic advertising: all you need to know
Programmatic Advertising: All You Need to Know
August 6, 2024 - Programmatic advertising involves ... advertising is about using particular ad formats. The ads are then published on display ad networks....