Digital marketing term
Real-Time Bidding
Selling a single impression in an auction that finishes in milliseconds as the page loads. The price is not a preprinted package; the bid follows that user and context.
Detailed explanation
A DSP bids for the advertiser, an SSP opens the publisher’s inventory, and an exchange matches them. Cookies, contextual signals, and a floor price feed the decision. Unlike a fixed-CPM insertion order, each impression is its own market.
A bad floor leaves inventory unsold or sells it too cheap. Stale data and bot bids create invalid impressions. Skip brand-safety and viewability filters and a cheap win becomes expensive damage.
Decide on CPM paid, win rate, viewability, invalid traffic, and CPA or ROAS. Saying programmatic failed without auction logs is blaming media without seeing placement or audience.
Frequently asked questions
- Is RTB the same as programmatic?
- RTB is the auction method. Programmatic also includes guaranteed deals. Not every programmatic buy is RTB.
- Why do some impressions never clear?
- Floor price, budget caps, safety filters, or a slow bid response. If win rate is low, split bid from inventory quality.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- DSPDemand-Side Platform: software advertisers use to buy impressions across programmatic exchanges. Bids, audiences, and frequency live here.
- SSPSupply-Side Platform: software publishers use to offer inventory to programmatic demand and try to maximize yield.
- PublisherThe party that owns the content and the ad inventory: a site, app, or show. Advertisers buy the impressions; this side sells the space and the audience.
- CPMCPM (Cost Per Mille) is the cost of 1,000 ad impressions; it is one of the most common media buying units.
- Display AdvertisingBanners, native units, and other visual formats on sites and apps. Unlike search text ads, they show up before someone has typed a query into the box.
- ImpressionAn impression is a single instance of an online ad being displayed to a user.