Inside Insticator’s SSP: A Guided Tour

Understanding SSPs

Though occasionally some deals for ad space are still sold the traditional way, with salespeople making a phone call and signing some kind of insertion order, the majority of ads online are filled via lightning-fast, automated auctions known as “programmatic.”

An SSP is a platform that empowers publishers to manage, sell, and optimize that ad inventory programmatically. It’s the publisher’s representative, a mediator between them and automated ad exchanges, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and advertisers.

Equipped with sophisticated algorithms and analytics, SSPs like Insticator’s help publishers maximize the value of their ad space, by dynamically serving their pricing in response to demand. Through this, publishers drive revenue, improve fill rates, and streamline processes.

Features of SSPs

SSPs vary from platform to platform in what they offer, but they generally offer some version of the following features:

• Real-Time Bidding (RTB): As we said, most ads are now sold through lightning-fast programmatic auctions. SSPs allow advertisers to bid on the ad space that publishers have put on the market.
• Header Bidding: a form of programmatic auction, SSPs allow publishers to auction their ads to multiple competing demand sources simultaneously. The more outlets bidding on your ad inventory, the more competition, and the higher the prices you can command.
• Inventory Management: Through SSPs, publishers can set preferences for their ad format, targeting criteria, and pricing minimums — similar to setting auction reserves, prices, and timelines when selling something on eBay or other auction sites. This allows publishers greater control over their inventory.
• Data Insights: SSPs typically provide data analytics and reporting on their sales, so that publishers can glean insights about performance, audience demographics, and other trends. Double down on what’s working and back away from what isn’t.
• Brand Safety: SSPs allow you mechanisms to make sure your content doesn’t appear alongside problematic ads. Filtering out creatives that don’t align with your brand messaging is a snap.

Benefits of SSPs

SSPs have rapidly become the industry-standard way to ply your trade online, and the reason is clear. SSPs have a slew of benefits that make working without them practically unthinkable. Benefits such as:

• Maximized Revenue: As we said above, auctions mean your ad space is selling for whatever the market will bear. The more bidders you have, the more robust the auctions and the more you can be sure you’re getting the best CPMs possible.
• Increased Efficiency and Scale: As with any automated process, programmatic auctions through SSPs are a real time-saver. Auctions happen almost instantaneously, especially compared to a negotiation over the phone. This frees up your team to focus resources on engaging content.
• Better Transparency & Optimization: SSPs provide a great window into the pricing and performance of ad campaigns, leading to better relationships between advertisers, agencies, and publishers. And with that information, advertisers and publishers alike gain valuable data they can use to improve performance further.
• Better User Experience: faster auctions mean pages load faster. More control over ad quality means your users won’t see as many low-quality ads. Even on this end of the content funnel, SSPs improve things.

But that’s all a window into what SSPs in general do. What makes Insticator’s SSP worthy of shouting it from the rooftops?

Insticator: The Experience Matters

At Insticator, the experience matters. And we’re not just talking about the experience of our staff — which is extensive —  or the experience you’ll have working with us, which is stellar. No, with Insticator’s SSP, we leverage the audience experience to create a holistic approach to maximizing your revenue.

Insticator’s suite of audience-engagement products may seem, at first glance, like an unnecessary frill on your page. But what they actually are is a secret weapon.

Our interactive content, polls, trivia, content-recirculation tools, and COOL Comments platform are pulling double, sometimes even triple duty for publishers. These interactive units entertain your audience, improve time-on-site, and help build a community of repeat visitors, yes, but more importantly, they’re generating a wide variety of valuable first-party data that serves as a force multiplier for your monetization efforts.

On the internet, knowledge is money — and with our audience-engagement tools at your disposal, you’ll know more about your audience than the competition does. Insticator’s SSP offers better, more granular targeting capabilities, allowing publishers to deliver more-relevant content and ads to their audience based on the intel this first-party data gives you, like audience demographics, interest targeting, browser behavior, location data, and more.

You’ll gain better data insights and analytics, giving you the ability to make better decisions for your site and your audience.

And all of this comes with responsive customer support so that you’re sure all your concerns are addressed and questions are answered. But when you’re working with Insticator, you’re not just working with Insticator: you’re also working with all the companies that are part of the Insticator family.

Healthy Relationships