Those cutting-edge, early adopting programmatic cats have developed some pretty confusing lingo for buying and selling ads automatically. Have no fear: we’ve decoded the jive talk so it’s easy to make smart, strategic decisions about programmatic.

1. T H E
speaking Programmatic
G U I D E T O
Those cutting-edge, early adopting programmatic cats have developed some pretty
confusing lingo for buying and selling ads automatically. Have no fear: we’ve
decoded the jive talk so it’s easy to make smart, strategic decisions about
programmatic.
Programmatic
60% 30 billion
Impression
Buying digital advertising
space automatically, with
computers using data to
decide which ads to buy and
how much to pay for them,
often in real-time.
UK digital display ads bought
programmatically in 20151
Private auction
An invitation-only auction for
programmatic ad space, also known as
a private marketplace (PMP).
Auctions for programmatic ads take
place in fractions of a second as the
page is being loaded.
The occasion when a user
loads a web page and sees an
ad. Programmatic buying is a
way of deciding which ad each
visitor will see.
Estimated number of
impressions served by Google
alone during a single day2
NEW!
Open auction
Real-time
bidding
When advertisers pay for fake
impressions generated by bots or
other non-human traffic.
Ad Fraud
Describes the ad spaces that are
available to buy (whether
programmatically or manually).
The currency in which advertisers usually
bid for programmatic ads.
Inventory CPM
SECOND-price
auction
The DSP that bids highest buys an ad –
but they only pay as much as the
second-highest price plus one cent.
The process by which different DSPs
bid for an impression on behalf of their
clients. In an open auction, any DSP
can bid for any impression.
2
The IAB defines an ad as “viewable” if
at least half of it appears on the
screen for more than one second.
Viewability
Amount of programmatic spend
through open auctions in 20146
The technology used by
programmatic buyers to
decide which impressions
to buy and how much to
pay for them.
Demand Side
Platform
DSP
It pulls together things like
behavioural and
demographic data to help
buyers understand which
users to target.
Data
Management
Platform
DMP
It’s the technology used by
publishers to sell
advertising space
programmatically.
Supply Side
Platform
SSP
15
Luma Partners
lists 15 DSPs
for display
advertising
alone3
8
Luma Partners
lists 8 SSPs
for display
advertising4
25
Luma Partners
lists 25 DMPs
for display
advertising5
70%
Amount of programmatic spend
predicted to go through private
auctions by 2021
80%
0.36 seconds
Typical duration of a
real-time bidding auction,
including serving the
winning ad7
Proportion of LinkedIn
standard display ad
inventory now
available to
programmatic
100%
Forrester predicts
average CPMs will
have risen by this
amount between 2012
and 20178
76%
Proportion of
programmatic buyers
who believe ad fraud
is undercutting their
performance.
69%
Proportion of
programmatic buyers
who worry that their
ads aren’t viewable.
63%
0.01 cents
The amount by which
the cost of an ad
exceeds the second
place bid on LinkedIn
Cost per Thousand
impressions
2C00145K001
2C00145K001
l000IMPRESSIONS
l000IMPRESSIONS
1CPM
1CPM
1
https://www.iabuk.net/about/press/archive/digital-adspend-grows-at-fastest-rate-for-seven-years
2
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/25/30-billion-times-a-day-google-runs-an-ad-13-million-times-it-works/
3
http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape/
4
http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape/
5
http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape/
6
http://adage.com/article/digital/programmatic-half-total-display-ad-revenues/299440/
7
https://www.exchangewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Life-of-an-Ad_A4-1.jpg
8
http://adage.com/article/digital/forrester-reduces-forecast-online-ad-spending/237647/