Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising is how most display, video and in-app ads are traded today: machines evaluate each impression and decide in milliseconds who shows an ad and at what price.
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In traditional media buying, an advertiser negotiated a placement with a publisher and paid for a fixed volume of impressions. Programmatic advertising automates that trade. Publishers make inventory available through software, advertisers set targeting and bids in their own software, and the two meet in an exchange that settles each impression individually.
How programmatic buying works
The buyer side uses a demand-side platform (DSP), the seller side uses a supply-side platform (SSP), and an ad exchange connects them. When an ad slot loads, the SSP sends the impression to exchanges, the exchanges send bid requests to DSPs, and the winning bid’s creative is served, all before the page or app screen finishes loading.
Real-time bidding (RTB)
In open real-time bidding, any connected buyer can bid on any impression the publisher makes available. It offers the widest reach and the least control over where ads appear.
Private marketplaces and deals
In a private marketplace (PMP), a publisher invites selected buyers to bid on specific inventory, often with a floor price. Preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed go further, fixing price or volume in advance while still delivering through programmatic pipes. These options trade scale for transparency and brand safety.
Programmatic for app install and re-engagement
For app marketers, programmatic mostly means buying in-app inventory: interstitials, rewarded video, banners and native ads shown inside other apps. It is used in two ways.
- App install campaigns bid on impressions predicted to lead to an install, and mature campaigns optimize toward post-install events such as trial starts or purchases.
- Re-engagement campaigns target existing users, for example people who installed but never started a trial, and send them back into the app with a deep link.
On iOS, restrictions on cross-app tracking mean programmatic buyers often work with contextual signals and aggregated attribution. Measurement is less granular than it once was, which makes it more important to connect each source to real subscription outcomes.
Transparency and fraud caveats
Automation makes programmatic efficient, and it also makes it easy to lose sight of what you are buying.
- Supply path. An impression can pass through several intermediaries, each taking a fee. Ask how much of your spend reaches the publisher.
- Placement visibility. Open auctions can place ads in apps you would never choose. Request app-level reporting and use allow lists or block lists.
- Invalid traffic. Fake impressions, click spamming and install fraud exist in open supply. Fraud tends to show up as installs that never open the app, start a trial or pay.
- Attribution gaps. Self-reported platform numbers and your own analytics rarely match exactly. Reconcile against revenue you can verify.
Programmatic vs Apple Ads
Apple Ads is not programmatic in this sense. It is a first-party auction run by Apple inside the App Store, and it is bought only through Apple’s platform or API. Search intent makes its traffic behave very differently from in-app programmatic impressions, so budgets between the two should be set on measured downstream returns rather than on price per impression or per install.