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the complete guide to Ad Servers
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Let’s begin this guide with the simplest definition of an ad server: An ad server is a piece of advertising technology that places digital ads in front of digital readers or viewers.
To do that, the ad server has to process a lot of information about the ads themselves, the publishers and buyers involved, the user and their data, and much more — in real-time. Ad servers fit squarely into the programmatic ecosystem, so they have to operate as massive decision engines that can facilitate the results of potentially thousands of real-time programmatic auctions per minute.
That sounds pretty complicated, but it’s only the beginning of what ad servers have become over time. In the early days of ad servers, they served the simple function of placing the right ads in front of the right people. But today, they have evolved into something new. Ad servers can now do advertising campaign optimization and management, reporting, and much more.
The tail-end of our definition of ad servers makes it sound like we should be asking what ad servers don’t do. That’s fair, and it’s a common situation in ad tech: The disparate pieces of the ad tech stack start to bleed into each other’s capabilities as different companies develop their products.
But to assume that ad servers are the same as the other parts of the ad tech stack would be a mistake. Still, you hear people use a demand-side platform (DSP), supply-side platform (SSP), ad exchange, and ad network as synonyms for “ad server.”
The problem, of course, is that some ad servers do share some capabilities with these other ad tech tools. However, they are not all one and the same. For example, DSPs allow advertisers and ad agencies to manage their campaigns in much the same way an advertiser-side ad server would allow, but a DSP can manage campaigns across multiple distinct ad servers — not just one.
It’s the same situation for SSPs, except these tools allow publishers to manage their ad inventory across multiple distinct ad servers. Meanwhile, ad networks and exchanges are all about injecting demand for ad inventory into publishers’ programmatic advertising configurations. While they interface with these tools, ad servers do not themselves provide inventory or demand.
Increased Transparency Through Better Reporting
Ad servers bring to the table advanced reporting capabilities and funnel unbelievably large amounts of data into those reports. Simply having the raw data can enable more thorough reporting, but some of the more advanced ad servers will automatically generate custom reports.
Why does that matter for publishers? Because your ability to deliver transparency through more in-depth reporting better demonstrates the value of gaining access to your audience for advertisers. Having clear, actionable numbers to point to enables you to command higher CPMs and even boost your direct sales efforts.
Faster Programmatic Bidding
Ad servers bring additional processing power to publishers’ programmatic setups by lending their sophisticated decision-making engines to the programmatic auction process. They plug into DSPs, SSPs, ad exchanges, and ad networks to efficiently process real-time auctions and serve ad creative to the optimal user at the optimal time. Doing that faster means lower latency and the ability to fill more impressions.
Greater Control Over Ads
When you have greater control over when, how, and which ads are served, you can make changes that increase key metrics like click-through rate (CTR), viewability, and similar. That translates to higher CPMs, which is, of course, the primary goal of most of the ad tech stack for publishers.
More Demand in One Place
A high-quality ad server enables you to incorporate and manage as many demand sources as you want in a single place. That can become extremely helpful in the more advanced stages of the publisher growth cycle, in which you need to add more than a single source of demand in order to increase competition for your ad inventory. Ad servers make managing multiple demand sources — including programmatic and direct demand — much easier.
Ad Management
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A simple user interface. You want a user interface that makes inventory or campaign management not just easy, but fast.
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Traffic forecasting. Accurate predictions about future traffic patterns can help you plan and budget, as well as sell against the numbers.
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Campaign scheduling. This allows you to set and automate start and end dates for individual campaigns.
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Support for various ad units. The basics like display banners should be a given, but make sure any ad server you choose supports all IAB-supported standard unit types, as well as any premium ad units you are interested in.
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Macro location insertion. This allows you to serve ads that include users’ locations.
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Advanced reporting. To effectively manage ads within your ad server, you need the server to provide detailed, customizable reporting on every conceivable and relevant ad metric.
Ad Delivery and Decision Making
Ultimately, ad servers have to function as massive decision engines to decide which ads to serve to which users at lightning speed. Doing that effectively is going to require some pretty advanced features, such as the following:
- Capping. This refers to settings that stop campaigns from serving after they have met a particular spend limit each day.
- Frequency capping. This is the ability to control how often and how many times in total a particular ad is shown to an individual user.
- Multi-channel ad serving. This is the ability of an ad server to serve ads across various channels, such as web, mobile, and over-the-top (OTT).
- Sequencing of ad creatives. This enables you to control the order in which a series of ads is shown to users.
Targeting
- Location-based targeting. Ad servers should be able to target users based on where they are at the time they initiate an auction.
- Time targeting. A high-quality ad server should allow you to serve targeted ads to certain users based on the time of day, which may dictate the type of user most likely to be using the site or app.
- Technology-based targeting. Some ads would be better served to smartphone users, and good ad servers will allow you to target based on device, including mobile, desktop, tablet, and OTT.
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Behavioral targeting. Users’ online interests and search history can tell you a lot about what kinds of ads they might best respond to. That’s why you want an ad server that facilitates targeting based on these considerations.
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Demographic targeting. Income, nationality, marital status, language, and various other demographic descriptors dictate how well an ad will resonate with particular audiences. Your ad server should allow you to target users based on demographic information.
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Retargeting. This refers to an ad server’s ability to cooperate with tools that serve ads to users based on the brand websites they have interacted with in the past. The ability to “follow” users around the internet gives brands a much better shot at making a sale, making it a valuable feature for both advertisers and publishers who want a slice of their advertising budgets.
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