Ad buying platforms (DSPs) and ad networks

Buying the ad, planning the campaign, making the ad and bidding for space on every screen

Open a news website on your phone. Before the page finishes loading, an auction has taken place. Dozens of advertisers have looked at the space on the page, and at what is known about you. Each has decided how much to bid, and the winner's ad appears. All of this took less than a second, and no person was involved. Advertising pays for most of the free internet, and most of it is now bought this way.

An ad auction: when a page opens, the publisher offers the space through an ad exchange, each advertiser's DSP decides in milliseconds whether to bid and how much, and the winner's ad appears.

Buying by software. Most digital ads are now bought automatically, in auctions like this one. This is called programmatic advertising. The auction has two sides:

The demand side

is the advertisers, who want to buy space for their ads. This Market Segment covers them.

The supply side

is the publishers and apps, who sell the space. (More on them in Market Segment 34.2, Publisher ad monetisation platforms (SSPs).)

The tools of the buyer

Media planning and buying systems

An advertising agency plans where a brand's ads will run, on TV channels and websites. It then buys the space, checks that the ads ran, and pays the bills.

Demand-side platforms (DSPs)

A DSP is the advertiser's bidding software. For each ad space on offer, it decides in milliseconds whether to bid, and how much.

Ad exchanges

An exchange is the marketplace where the auctions run, between buyers and sellers.

Dynamic creative

"Creative" is the ad itself: the image, the video, the words. Dynamic creative builds each ad from parts, to suit each viewer. (More on the tools that make ads in Market Segment 13.5, Creative tools, event platforms and creator marketing, in Industry Vertical 13, Martech.)

Where the ads run

Mobile apps

Free games and apps earn from ads. App makers also buy ads to find new users.

Location

Some platforms target ads by the places a phone has been, such as a mall or an airport.

Connected TV (CTV)

A smart TV is connected to the internet, so its ads can be bought like web ads. Addressable TV goes further. It shows different ads to different homes watching the same programme. (More on TV and streaming in Market Segment 32.1, OTT and live streaming platforms, and on how ads are stitched into a stream in Market Segment 32.2, Video streaming technology, both in Industry Vertical 32, Streaming and broadcast.)

Addressable TV shows different ads to different homes watching the same programme.

Ads for special audiences

Healthcare

Ads for medicines must follow strict privacy rules, and some are aimed only at doctors.

Jobs

Employers advertise their job openings, and software decides where to place each one.

Retail media

Retailers and online marketplaces sell ad space on their own sites, and use their shopper data to target it.

The buyer's tools run from planning and buying, through making the ad and bidding, to the exchange where the auction runs; the ads then appear in apps, by location, on the web and on connected TV.

How the money flows. Advertisers pay for each thousand views of an ad, or for each click, or each app install. The DSPs and the tools around them usually take a share of what the advertiser spends. So they earn more as ad budgets move online.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has three sub-segments:

Planning the campaign and making the ad: media planning, dynamic creative and AI for marketers

Buying on the phone, the web and the television: DSPs, mobile ads, location and TV

Ads aimed at doctors, job-seekers and shoppers: healthcare ads, job ads and retail media

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Three more sections are on this page: Planning the campaign and making the ad, Buying on the phone, the web and the television, and Ads aimed at doctors, job-seekers and shoppers. Sign in to read them here, in full.

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Planning the campaign and making the ad
Buying on the phone, the web and the television
Ads aimed at doctors, job-seekers and shoppers

Planning the campaign and making the ad

Media planning and buying systems, dynamic creative, AI marketing platforms

Mediaocean

with engineers in Pune, runs the system that advertising agencies and brands use to plan, buy, track and pay for media, across TV and digital. It is the main record of what the advertising business buys. Mediaocean has the most job postings of any company covered mainly in this Market Segment.

Jivox

with engineers in Bengaluru, builds each ad from parts, such as the product, the offer and the image, to suit each viewer.

Pixis

founded in Bengaluru, with engineers there, sells AI that picks the audience, makes the ads and moves money between campaigns.

Buying on the phone, the web and the television

Demand-side platforms, mobile and in-app advertising, location-based targeting, connected and addressable TV

Mobile advertising

Verve

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs a mobile advertising platform for both buyers and sellers.

Moloco

sells a buying platform based on machine learning. App makers use it to find new users.

InMobi Advertising

founded in Bengaluru, with engineers there, runs one of the largest mobile ad exchanges, and its own buying platform. InMobi was once India's first start-up valued at a billion dollars.

Affle

with engineers in Delhi and Bengaluru, is an Indian mobile advertising company whose shares trade on the stock market. It runs ad networks for app marketers. It also runs attribution, which tells them which ad brought in each new user.

Blis

with engineers in Mumbai, targets ads by the places phones have been.

Buying platforms for the web

Yahoo

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs Yahoo DSP, one of the larger buying platforms that is independent of Google, Meta and Amazon.

Criteo

with engineers in Delhi, shows shoppers ads for the products they looked at. It also runs the ad businesses of retailers.

Adform

with engineers in Mumbai, sells a European advertising platform.

Ads on television. Two companies sell TV ads by household:

LG Ad Solutions

with engineers in Bengaluru, is the advertising business of LG's smart TVs.

INVIDI Technologies Corp.

with engineers in Chennai and Bengaluru, makes software that lets cable and satellite operators show different ads to different homes during the same programme.

Other companies

AtomicAds

in Bengaluru, is another company in this area.

Aarki

is another company in this area.

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment also works here:

Epsilon

with engineers in Bengaluru, holds data on who each consumer is, and has built an advertising platform on it. Epsilon has more job postings than any company covered mainly in this Market Segment. (More on it in Market Segment 13.3, Customer data platforms (CDP) and identity resolution, in Industry Vertical 13, Martech.)

Google, Meta and Amazon, which sell most of the world's digital ads, are covered elsewhere. (More on them in Google, Meta and Amazon, in the big-tech collection.) The Trade Desk is not covered in this Market Segment.

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Ads aimed at doctors, job-seekers and shoppers

Healthcare advertising, programmatic job ads, retail media

Healthcare

DeepIntent

with engineers in Pune, sells a buying platform for healthcare marketers. It reaches patients and doctors while following America's health-privacy rules.

Doceree

founded in India, with engineers in Delhi, shows messages to doctors inside the software they use to write prescriptions. (More on doctors' software in Market Segment 22.1, Electronic health record (EHR) software, in Industry Vertical 22, Digital health.)

Three companies covered mainly in other Market Segments also work here:

Joveo

with engineers in Bengaluru, places employers' job ads automatically, across job sites. (More on it in Market Segment 12.4, Applicant tracking systems (ATS) and recruitment marketing, in Industry Vertical 12, HR tech.)

CommerceIQ

with engineers in Bengaluru, manages brands' ads on Amazon and other online marketplaces. (More on it in Market Segment 27.2, Retail pricing and merchandising analytics, in Industry Vertical 27, Retail tech. More on the marketplaces in Market Segment 26.1, Online marketplaces, in Industry Vertical 26, E-commerce and D2C brands.)

dunnhumby

with engineers in Delhi, runs retail media for supermarkets, using their shopper data. (More on it in Market Segment 13.7, Loyalty and rewards platforms, in Industry Vertical 13, Martech.)

The bid made by AI.

Programmatic advertising was the first large market where machines set the price of every sale. Now AI models also choose the audience, make the ad and set the budget. The big platforms offer campaigns where the advertiser supplies only a goal and a product. The independent buying platforms, and the Indian engineering centres that build them, now compete with systems that do it all. (More on checking whether an ad worked in Market Segment 34.3, Ad verification and marketing measurement.)

That is the buying side of advertising: the systems that plan campaigns, make the ads and bid for each viewer on the phone, the web and the TV. India built some of these companies, and builds the platforms of many more.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What adtech companies hire for.

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