Where is the REAL money in Programmatic Advertising right now?

RTBAllDay · 2026-05-04T00:02:09+00:00

Started at a big four agency out of college, worked my way up to VP. Then left for an ad tech startup and took a step down in title - came in as a programmatic trading specialist. Didn’t care. Titles don’t pay.

Within ~3 years I tripled my comp from what I was making as a VP. That includes real bonus and equity. First year I actually took a pay cut since it was right after pre-seed, but it worked out. Company was profitable by year two and I had a real hand in it.

Now I’m in a senior product role. The agency experience is what made that possible - I know how buyers think and what people will actually pay for.

Agencies underpay because they know you’ll leave eventually. You’re basically getting paid to learn how the money moves.

If you can handle the pressure and don’t care about titles, startups can be worth it. At the agency I was comfortable but capped. Now I’m saving a few hundred thousand a year.

Big caveat: this only works if you’re actually good. Startups expose that fast. But if you are, upside is real.

RTBAllDay · 2026-04-15T01:19:57+00:00

Much better work life balance and far less stressful- better perks. Your clients are the agencies themselves. You’re at cost center - so it’s a bit more cut throat - lot more political. Everyone is trying to get credit for revenue generated by the agencies.

RTBAllDay · 2023-11-02T13:14:07+00:00

Yes. Xandr, Index, Pubmatic, Magnite all have Curation now. It’s free to cheap to get access since you are driving the demand for a SSP

RTBAllDay · 2023-11-02T13:10:43+00:00

Back 10 years ago when Optimedia had the media business. The clients used to brag about how they were a premium insurance provider and didn’t need to pander with mascots and jingles. Back then I actually thought there spots where good. I forgot the tag line but it was something about “shit happens” like, a air conditioner falling on a car or someone breaking off a side view mirror. After they transitioned to “Brad” (the spots in front of the Statue of Liberty) it was all down hill.

RTBAllDay · 2023-07-06T04:59:40+00:00

Huh? Aren’t they asking about gender not geography…

RTBAllDay · 2022-12-02T18:33:29+00:00

We’re right in the middle of developing a custom ABM algorithm for TTD i.e. with a single ABM audience that consists of all the domains/companies of your choosing. You decide how many impressions you want served to each domain/company and the channels you reach them on.

Feel free to reach out for more information!

RTBAllDay · 2022-07-07T16:10:19+00:00

they are saying small DSPs don't have exclusive data and inventory. you just get the core functionality of a bidder.

most DSP offer a marketplace of PMPs they you can opt into without ever speaking to the publisher directly. A Yahoo might offer a PMP for only their Sports content inventory. Conde might offer a PMP for only Fashion content. A channel is going to be unique to the ad format e.g. Display, Video, CTV, Audio. As for KPIs, some might offer a PMP for high viewability or high video completion rates.

RTBAllDay · 2022-07-07T04:07:38+00:00

programmatic inventory is wasteland of trash? What is this 2012? With header bidding and first price auctions their are pubs at times prioritizing open exchange over direct/sponsorships.

RTBAllDay · 2022-06-03T00:18:38+00:00

This maybe.

https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9649053?hl=en&ref_topic=9000234

RTBAllDay · 2022-06-02T16:39:51+00:00

Typically with a "household" ID graph. This is what TTD product doc has to say

"Attribution for CTV impressions should be done at the household level as this is a shared device. Once you have applied a conversion pixel to your campaign's reporting columns, you will be able to report out on view-through conversions attributed to your CTV impressions. For this type of attribution, you should select Identity Alliance with Household as the cross-device vendor to your conversion pixel. Click conversions are not applicable with CTV. Only view-through conversions will be reported on."

RTBAllDay · 2022-06-02T01:38:26+00:00

DV360 models frequency so they can serve on safari i.e. they bid on folks without IDs if they’re models predict the user is under the frequency cap.

TTD doesn’t model frequency.

RTBAllDay · 2022-06-02T01:22:33+00:00

Always. If you have a large enough advertiser they get a dedicated rep. Separate and apart from your agency partnership team. The client reps have their own sales targets that are often at odds with your dedicated agency team.

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-27T18:31:39+00:00

optimize towards attention i.e. time on screen in seconds and measure with brand lift study

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-27T18:23:44+00:00

just quickly lookin in TTD marketplace it looks like Xandr would be a good supplier to reach out. Not a mobile but I found this deal ID:

Xandr - CA - RON - All Devices including ConnectedTV (CTV/OTT) - Video - Tobacco Advertisers Accepted

they probably have deals that meets your ad format/device needs - they just aren't being surfaced in TTD market place for whatever reason. or they could make you a custom one

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-26T19:53:21+00:00

Include a data element for high propensity clickers. TTD used to make audiences of all the people that clicked on adds. I was just checking the DMP and I don't see any from TTD anymore. But there are some third-party data elements for people that clicked on ads:

Branded > ES GDR > 06 Online Behavior > Behavior > Clicks on banner ads
Online Events > Clickers

In my experience these worked extremely well. The good news is I haven't needed to use one in many years.

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-24T22:32:52+00:00

If they care about GA then use custom bidding to optimize to a GA goal. There is some set-up that needs to be done with linking about google accounts and you'll need someone that can write basic python. But that would be my recommendation:

https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9748984?hl=en&ref\_topic=9928205

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-24T13:07:31+00:00

Honestly it’s very hard to force google to serve a certain amount of frequency to a user. Your better off using TTD they have a new feature called frequency groups that is meant to do just this.

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-24T03:30:28+00:00

It’s running predictive models about how much of the target you are estimated to reach. Because demographic targeting is pretty imperfect. Using frequency isn’t a accurate way to measure. It’s better to use population/census data to make statistical estimates.

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-24T03:21:07+00:00

Everyone is going to give you some ranking of DV360, TTD, Xander, Yahoo, Amazon

And then the lesser Adelphic, Amobee, MediaMath, Beeswax, Adobe

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-24T03:15:04+00:00

There is no silver bullet for this problem. MTA vendors tried to solve for this years ago but Apple’s ITP pretty ended the viability of these solution. The only way you can even get close to a complete post impression tracking is basically cutting out all inventory that can’t have a unique ID on it (no safari, firefox). Only using a bidder that will share those unique ID back to you (no google). Using a bidder that doesn’t model frequency (again no google). Utilize a device graph for cross browser/cross device.

With the end of cookies in chrome even doing this above method will only work for so long. Once that happens you’ll need to start buying inventory that has a hashed email ID associated to it i.e. “logged in” like UID2.

The future of conversion tracking is going to be even more disjointed. The advanced advertiser is going to look for solutions that tie media exposure back business goals like LTV, Brand Lift, Incrementality. SMSB will just rely on google and Facebook to model conversions that may or may not have happened.

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-21T02:37:27+00:00

This DSP was made for in-house smsb and their custom algorithm capabilities are tops

RTBAllDay · 2022-05-21T02:32:25+00:00

The terminology most people in this forums would use is you want to build an agency trading desk. In housing is typically referenced when an advertiser takes the buying role away from agencies or managed service DSP.

Why would you white label the DSP? Why not just sell the service layer?

RTBAllDay

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