Online Advertising Technology Overview

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is I don’t know which half.” That quote attributed to John Wanamaker, a 19th century retail merchant, is familiar to many of us.

That’s the real beauty of Online Advertising platforms. Unlike Wanamaker, modern marketers do know which of their ads are working, converting, selling and driving revenue. Often down to the last click. Even better, not only do marketers know which Online Advertising programs are working and how well, they can change the ads that aren’t performing--in real-time.

Today, Online Advertising can be characterized as fast, responsive and immersive. Fast because online ads, especially those on mobile devices, must catch the consumer at the very moment of consideration. Responsive because the ads must respond to behavioral or interest triggers to be relevant to clients. Increasingly, ads are also immersive, requiring interactivity from the user to get the message and issue a call to action.

The two biggest trends in Online Advertising are Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and Programmatic Media Buying. RTB enables advertisers to bid for available ad space with publishers at the precise moment a potential customer is looking for that type of solution. Programmatic Media Buying enables marketers to automate the buying, placement and optimization of advertising based on preset parameters for budgets, audience segments, number of impressions and other key criteria for optimizing advertising ROI and reach. This will be covered in more detail later in this report.

This study covers the following sections:

• Executive Summary
• Online Advertising Market Overview
• Online Advertising Vendor Landscape
• Evolution of the Landscape
• Analyst Bottom Line
• About the Research Analysts
• Our Technology Overview Methodology
• About Demand Metric