Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/online-advertising

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Ad exchange

Technology platform for buying and selling of advertising

Ad exchange

Technology platform for buying and selling of advertising

Main article: Online advertising

A visualization of the real-time bidding market in programmatic advertising online

url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/-Glgi9RRuJs |archive-date=2021-12-21 |url-status=live|title=How an ad is served with real-time bidding |via=YouTube}} Prices for the inventory are determined through real-time bidding (RTB). The approach is technology-driven as opposed to the historical approach of negotiating price on media inventory. This represents a field beyond ad networks as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and by advertising trade publications.

History

Before exchanges, publishers sold leftover ad space through advertising networks. These networks aggregated inventory from many sites, but didn't offer real-time bidding. In the early 2000s, Brian O'Kelley created the first ad exchange at Right Media, known as the Right Media Exchange, which officially launched in 2005. Right Media's ad exchange built algorithms for predicting, budgeting, and pacing, which enabled real-time bidding (RTB). Yahoo continued to build upon this technology after acquiring the company in 2007.

Around the same time, Jason Knapp and Fabrizio Blanco were also working on the concept of RTB at Strategic Data Corp. Knapp filed a patent on their RTB technology in 2006. In 2007, Google acquired DoubleClick and began building what would become the industry's most influential ad exchange, DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX), which is now part of Google Ad Manager.

As the ad exchange model matured, specialized layers formed. Demand-side platforms were built to help advertisers bid intelligently in real-time across exchanges. Supply-side platforms were built to help publishers manage and optimize their inventory before sending it into exchanges.

Examples

Notable ad exchanges include:

  • AppLovin (which recently acquired MoPub)
  • FreeWheel (owned by Comcast)
  • Google Ad Manager (also known as Google Authorized Buyers, formerly known as AdX, and now part of Google Ad Manager)
  • InMobi
  • Magnite Inc (formed by the combination of Rubicon Project, SpotX, and Telaria)
  • OpenX (company)
  • PubMatic
  • Smaato (now part of Verve (company))
  • Xandr (formerly AT&T AdWorks which bought AppNexus, now owned by Microsoft)
  • Yahoo (formerly AOL, Brightroll, OATH and other entities rolled into the Yahoo brand)

References

References

  1. Diaz Ruiz, Carlos. (2025-03-14). "Market-Oriented Disinformation Research: Digital Advertising, Disinformation and Fake News on Social Media". Routledge.
  2. "IAB".
  3. "Right Media Exchange: Leading Platform Talks Ad Trading, Liquidity, Global Reach And Brand Safety - ExchangeWire.com".
  4. Cross-Kovoor, Tim. (2018-06-07). "Who Invented What in Ad Tech? – Part One".
  5. "Auction For Each Individual Ad Impression".
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

online-advertising
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Ad exchange — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report