A DSP enables advertisers, agencies and ad networks to buy display impressions across multiple ad exchanges (DoubleClick, Right Media, ADSDAQ, etc). While a number of ad networks — their raison d’etre under threat — are trying to rebrand as DSPs, the “real” DSPs have sophisticated black box targeting and optimization algorithms (“decision engines”) that help advertisers and agencies get the most value for each individual impression. Basically, these decisions engines do serious number crunching to establish the value of an incoming impression then place a bid accordingly. This is all done in milliseconds.

If you’re a local small business;

• Pick a DSP that can target audiences in a particular geo-locations
• That also has access to 3rd-party audience data so you can target your specific demographics
• You may also want to check if DSP support rich media ads
• What is the minimum ad spend?
• How friendly is the user interface? Is it simple enough so that a fifth grader can navigate through it?
• Support – DSP may help you launch your first campaign and assist you if you there are problems in your campaigns?

DSPs also help the advertisers and agencies to tie their own targeting data or targeting data bought from third parties into the DSP’s decisioning engine. These third parties might include individual data providers (like DataLogix or Experian) or actual data exchanges (like BlueKai or eXelate), which are marketplaces where individual data providers can sell their cookie data to advertisers looking to target ads.

With respect to how DSPs work, specifically the audience targeting capabilities, it is made possible using a technology known as real-time bidding (RTB). With RTB, every time a page load on a publisher’s website, the ad space on the page is auctioned off to the highest bidder in real time — meaning milliseconds. The bidding process is conducted by the ad exchange, and the bidders on the ad space do so via DSPs. In the entire process, the advertiser never has to interact directly with the publisher.

In other words, DSPs are the bidders on behalf of advertisers, and the ad exchanges and SSPs are the auctioneers on behalf of publishers. In all of this, the actual “goods” being auctioned off are the people (or audiences) viewing the publisher’s ad inventory.

The main advantage of White Label DSP is it’s cost-effectiveness. Imagine how much it would take you to build your own DSP, hire tech team to operate it and maintain it, train those people, retain them, and so on. Building your own DSP is time-consuming and frankly speaking, expensive. Especially if your marketing budget is not high, building your own DSP is not wise. Fortunately, there is an alternative – to get a White Label DSP, rebrand it, fully customize it and use it as its own.

Well, it is the best choice for companies and businesses that want to minimize production costs, save up on research and development, enter market as soon as possible, or for companies that do not have a special registration or licensing. As a conclusion, I may add that there are many advantages White Label DSP has to offer.

Marketer education – Need to educate the marketer (advertisers/agencies) on where specific data is coming from (transparency of origin).

Business Model – Product vs Service vs Hybrid offering

Hyper-Growth – Growth and competitive pressures have left many DSPs scrambling to scale their business processes, software quality control, and customer support to keep up with their published roadmaps.

The inconsistency of media supply, both for volume and quality – DSP’s need to have consistency in the media to effectively optimize the campaign based on available data. Despite the massive growth of RTB supply, the huge discrepancy in media values puts upward price pressure on the higher quality supply sources.This forces DSPs to bid on lower value media which is more winnable, but often does not perform very well since most DSPs only get paid when/if their advertisers win the ad impression.

Measurement of value – DSPs are still not sophisticated when it comes to attribution modeling, a critical component of display ad value measurement.

Really the advantage of using a white-label DSP is that it allows you to show your client something that looks proprietary. In terms of its performance, there will be no change as white labeling is usually just adding a logo, changing colors, and maybe how your pixels look like.

Usually, media resellers, trading desks, and agencies use white-label DSPs.