Publisher ad monetisation platforms (SSPs)

Monetising the page, selling a site's empty ad slots to many advertisers at once

A cooking website has millions of readers and no paywall. It pays its writers and its servers from the ads beside its recipes. Every time a reader opens a page, the site has a few empty ad slots to sell, and less than a second to sell them. The website does not do this itself. It uses software built by the companies in this Market Segment.

The seller's side of the auction. Every ad auction has a buyer and a seller. (More on the buyers in Market Segment 34.1, Ad buying platforms (DSPs) and ad networks.) The sellers are publishers: websites, apps and streaming services with ad space to sell. They are called the supply side.

The demand side, advertisers and their DSPs, and the supply side, publishers and their SSPs, meet on the ad exchange where the auction runs.

Words to know

Impression

one showing of one ad to one person. Ad space is sold by the impression.

Supply-side platform (SSP)

the publisher's selling software. It offers each impression to many buyers at once, and collects the money.

Floor price

the lowest bid the publisher will accept. The SSP sets it, so that ad space is not sold too cheaply.

Ad exchange

the marketplace where buyers and sellers meet, and the auction runs.

Header bidding

a small piece of code at the top of a web page. Before the page loads, it asks many SSPs and exchanges for bids at once, so that the publisher gets the best price.

Ad network

a company that collects ad space from many small publishers, and sells it to advertisers as one bundle.

Header bidding asks many SSPs and exchanges for bids at once; the best bid above the floor price wins, the advertiser pays per thousand impressions, the SSP keeps a share and the publisher gets the rest.

Choosing ads by the page, not the person. For years, ads followed each reader around the web. A cookie, a small file stored by the browser, told advertisers who the reader was and where they had been. Privacy laws and browser makers are now restricting this. So ads are once again chosen by what a page is about. An ad for cooking pans goes beside a recipe. This is called contextual advertising.

Ad formats

Native ads

look like the content around them, such as a sponsored article in a news feed.

Rich media

ads move, expand or respond when a user touches them.

Video and TV ads

Streaming services and smart TVs now sell their ad slots through the same auctions. (More on ads in streams in Market Segment 32.2, Video streaming technology, in Industry Vertical 32, Streaming and broadcast.)

How the money flows. The advertiser pays for each thousand impressions. The SSP or ad network keeps a share of that money, and passes the rest to the publisher. Some large deals are still sold by people, not by auction. Media companies use order-management software to take and schedule these orders.

Fake traffic. Some websites use bots, programs that pretend to be people, to create fake impressions and collect ad money. Sellers and buyers both use software to catch them. (More on it in Market Segment 34.3, Ad verification and marketing measurement.)

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.

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Platforms that sell ad space for publishers

Platforms that sell ad space for publishers

Supply-side platforms and exchanges

PubMatic

founded in Pune, with engineers there, runs one of the largest independent supply-side platforms. It sells ad space for publishers and streaming services around the world. Its shares trade on the stock market in New York. PubMatic has the most job postings in this Market Segment, and the most of any company covered mainly in this Industry Vertical.

Index Exchange

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs an independent ad exchange.

Affinity Global

with engineers in Mumbai, runs a supply-side platform and sells rich-media ad formats.

TripleLift

with engineers in Pune, sells native ad space and TV ad space.

Contextual advertising

Media.net

with engineers in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, was built largely in India by its Indian founders. It runs one of the largest contextual ad networks, matching ads to the words on a page. It also sells header-bidding technology to publishers.

GumGum

with engineers in Pune, places ads by reading both the page and its images. It also measures attention: how long people actually look at an ad.

Channel Factory

with engineers in Bengaluru and Mumbai, places brands' ads on the YouTube videos that suit them.

Helping smaller publishers and app makers earn

MonetizeMore

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs header bidding for smaller publishers, and catches fake traffic.

GreedyGame

with engineers in Bengaluru, helps app makers earn from ads through its product PubScale.

Selling ads directly

Operative

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells the order-management system that media companies use to sell and schedule their ads.

Other companies

Adsremedy

in Mumbai, is another company in this area.

Google's AdSense and Ad Manager are covered elsewhere. (More on them in Google, in the big-tech collection.) Magnite is not covered in this Market Segment. (More on the publishers who sell ad space in Market Segment 33.2, Digital media publishers, in Industry Vertical 33, News, publishing and social media.)

The page no one visits.

Publishers' ad businesses depend on readers visiting their pages. Now search engines answer with an AI summary, and send fewer readers on. At the same time, the tracking cookie is fading, and TV ads are being sold by auction. So the supply-side platforms are moving into streaming TV. Some also help publishers license their content to the companies that build AI models, as the ad market of the open web shrinks.

That is the selling side of advertising: the platforms that offer each impression to many buyers, the networks that match ads to pages, and the tools that help publishers earn. India built two of the best-known companies in this field, PubMatic and Media.net.

Who they hire

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

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