A 10-Step Guide to Evaluating Demand-Side Platforms

If you follow the latest digital media news, you may have noticed the term demand-side platform (DSP) quickly go from a) industry insider terminology to b) popular business model description to c) an inspiration for many alternative acronyms. (The media loves new acronyms, but it enjoys debate about them even more.) Are you keeping up?

Even for us, the sheer pace of information about DSPs in the marketplace has been astounding - and we are in the business of evaluating information in real time! Pair it with the emergence of real-time bidding, in fact, and you have a virtual torrent of new concepts, new lingo, and new possibilities.

In our conversations with marketers, however, we hear each day that there's still a need to understand the basics. In the rush to leap from A to B to C, many in the intended target audience may in fact have been left behind. In prior columns, I've done my best to try to help marketers understand the fundamentals of real-time bidding, demand-side platforms, and how together they can be leveraged for various marketing objectives.

How can this information be made actionable? To wrap up my series, a client suggested that I offer my take on a "consideration framework" for marketers who may be evaluating DSPs for their own advertising needs. Here are the main items to consider as I see it, along with some qualifying questions for each:

1. Real-time bidding (RTB): Our clients are finding that real-time bidding delivers significant value compared to other methods of buying online media. (See my column, "Real-Time Bidding: What It Is and Why It Matters" for an overview.) Does the DSP offer impression level RTB? Do they also offer rules-based bidding? Who are their inventory providers?