There are a ton of different terms and jargon out there when it comes to affiliate marketing.
The online advertising world can be incredibly complex and a lot of people are very confused when they first get into the business. In this article, we want to look at one particular term that seems to be misunderstood quite a lot and that is real-time bidding.
Did you know that you likely see up to 1700 ads every month? How do those ads get there in the first place? This is what we are going to show you.
What is RTB?
Real-time bidding falls under the category of programmatic advertising and media buying.
So, when an ad is displayed on a website there are 2 parties. One is the publisher who is the person or company that owns the website and the second is the advertiser who produces the ad and is competing with other advertisers to ensure that their ad is actually shown.
Real-time bidding allows advertisers to bid against other advertising in, surprise surprise, real time! Instead of lengthy processes and delays, RTB platforms allow this to all happen.
How does real-time bidding work?
RTB works by impressions. When you visit a website, you will see an ad in a particular spot. This is one impression. When you go to another page on that website and see another ad then this is the second impression and so on.
Advertisers who bid the highest amount get shown on the first impression. The second highest bidder gets shown on the second impression and the third on the third impression. Obviously, the first impression is the most sought after and this is why it costs the most money to get there.
You can set a frequency cap on the amount of impression you bid on so the bigger companies who have a large advertising budget can cap their bids on the first 2 or 3 impressions. This still gives smaller affiliates a chance to get their ad shown on the 4th of 5th impression.
Can RTB marketing help you?
Real-time bidding takes the effort of manually bidding on each spot away.
It is an easy way in which you can bid to have your advertisement displayed on a publisher’s digital space. Even if you are not a big player in the market and you don’t have a lot of money to spend you can still get in with an impression further down the line.
If you are an affiliate or hoping to market your products and service real-time bidding offers a very effective way in which to do this.
Real-Time Bidding and successful marketing
There are many real-time bidding platforms out there that can help you display ads on various websites.
If you want to be successful as a marketer then knowing about real-time bidding, how it works and how you can use it to your advantage is vital. This is the way in which advertising bidding works nowadays and there is no escaping it.
Using RTV can be very lucrative and if you do it right you will get highly targeted traffic to click on your ads and ultimately convert to your products and services.
