Hey Guys,

“Is it better to buy native ads thru a DSP or directly from advertising networks?” It’s a question I’m often asked as an account manager. I’d say there’s no right answer – it depends on your needs and it’s always a good idea to test both.
In today’s post, I will describe some of the main differences between DSP and direct media buying. Most importantly, I will list some problems/blockers* you may experience when buying directly from ad networks and explain how you can avoid them using our Voluum DSP.

*The problems/blockers are real-life examples that I either found on various affiliate forums or our Advertisers told me or my team about. They are by no means specific or limited to one single ad network.

Let’s start by defining a DSP

A Demand-side Platform is a platform for purchasing digital ad inventory from multiple ad exchanges in real-time bidding auctions. In other words, a DSP aggregates inventory of various networks in one place and allows you to place bids (most commonly CPM) in real time across all of the networks.
If you want to find out more about the RTB (real-time bidding), go ahead and watch the video I found the other day on YouTube – it’s a good one!

What about Ad Network?

An Ad Network is a platform that acts as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers. Ad Networks usually have their publishers’ inventory segmented and sell it to advertisers at a certain price (most commonly CPC).

The main difference

DSPs aggregate inventory from multiple ad networks and ad exchanges, so when buying thru a DSP you have the broadest possible choice of ad inventory. Now let’s proceed to the blockers that Advertisers face with Native Ads.

Challenges you might experience when buying directly from different Ad Networks

1. Investing your time
Usually, if you are buying traffic from a couple of native ad networks at the same time, you need to spend some time learning how to navi ...

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