Top demand side platform (DSPs) companies for your business

Demand-side platforms (DSPs) are the buying engine of programmatic advertising. They let advertisers and agencies bid on ad inventory across display, video, mobile, native, audio, and CTV from a single interface. The market has grown from a handful of early players in the late 2000s to hundreds of platforms today, with major names including Amazon DSP, Adobe Advertising Cloud, AdRoll, or Amobee. Below is a breakdown of what a DSP is, how it works, and the core functions it provides to media buyers, followed by profiles of the top DSP platforms operating in the market. 

What is a demand-side platform?

A demand-side platform (DSP) is an advertising technology (AdTech) platform that enables advertisers working at brands and ad agencies to buy inventory (ad space) on an impression-by-impression basis from publishers via supply-side platforms (SSPs) and ad exchanges. DSPs enable media buyers (advertisers and agencies) to purchase a range of inventory from many different publishers all from one user interface.

An easy way to understand how DSPs operate is to think of them as stockbrokers. In the same way investors use stockbrokers to purchase stock from companies via the stock exchange, media buyers use DSPs to purchase ad inventory from publishers through the ad exchange.

Demand-side platforms started to emerge in 2007 when real-time bidding began. Back then, most of the inventory purchased was for web browsers in desktops and laptops, but programmatic ad buying today extends across a range of devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets) and mediums, including mobile, video, and native. Many DSPs are delivered as a self-serve platform, allowing media buyers to create, run, and optimize campaigns directly through the user interface.

A DSP is essentially a middleman, but they are responsible for far more than just the purchasing of available inventory.

Here are some of the main functions DSPs provide media buyers:

• Create, run and manage several campaigns simultaneously across multiple SSPs and ad exchanges and control them from a single, centralized user interface
• Auto-optimize (via algorithms) campaigns to increase ROIs
• Use 3rd-party data from DMPs to improve targeting
• Provide real-time reporting via advanced analytics

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Top demand-side platforms

Amazon DSP
Massive scale via Amazon’s retail and shopper signals; one of the fastest-growing DSPs globally and a leading advertising platform for e-commerce-driven brands.

DV360 (Google)
Google’s omnichannel DSP, with unmatched reach via Google’s owned and partner inventory.

The Trade Desk
The largest independent DSP, NASDAQ-listed (TTD), with multi-billion-dollar annual revenue.

Yahoo DSP
Major scale via Yahoo’s owned properties and first-party audiences after the Apollo acquisition.

Criteo
Public commerce-media leader (NASDAQ: CRTO) and a digital advertising platform strong in retail media networks.

Adobe Advertising Cloud
Embedded in Adobe Experience Cloud, with deep connected TV and linear TV capabilities.

Teads
Roughly $900M+ combined annual revenue, listed on Nasdaq (OB), strong in omnichannel video.

Zeta Global
Public CDP-plus-DSP platform (NYSE: ZETA), absorbed Sizmek’s DSP in 2019.

Viant
 Public DSP (NASDAQ: DSP), people-based omnichannel platform with CTV focus.

Nexxen
Public CTV-led omnichannel platform on Nasdaq.

Basis Technologies
Large workflow-and-buying platform widely used by agencies in North America, with strong campaign management and reporting capabilities across channels.

Quantcast
AI-driven independent DSP with significant open-web reach.

RTB House
Polish unicorn known for deep-learning-powered retargeting at global scale.

StackAdapt
Fast-growing, well-funded self-serve DSP popular with agencies.

Adform
One of the largest independent European AdTech platforms with full-stack capabilities.

illumin
Dual-listed (TSX/Nasdaq: ILLM), journey-advertising DSP.

Liftoff
One of the largest mobile UA platforms after the Vungle merger.

Roku OneView
Powers Roku’s TV-led buying platform.

Beeswax
Bidder-as-a-Service capability inside Comcast’s TV ad stack.

What are the core components of a DSP?

Integrations

In order for DSPs to work, the platform connects to various supply sources, such as supply-side platforms (SSPs) and ad exchanges. Also, many DSPs integrate with data-management platforms (DMPs) to improve ad targeting, as well as ad verification and creative optimization platforms.

Bidder

A bidder is the component of a DSP responsible for placing bids on inventory in real time during real-time bidding (RTB) auctions.

Typically, a DSP will have multiple bidders located in different data centers to ensure they are able to receive and respond to bids within the required time frame (typically under 200ms) from SSPs and ad exchanges, which are also located in the same data center.

The bidders contain the cached version of an advertiser’s campaign targeting criteria to reduce latency when bidding, allowing the bidder to respond to bid requests quicker.

Ad server

An ad server plays two key roles in a DSP. First, it’s responsible for storing creatives and the ad markup. Second, it’s the component that displays the ad to the user. Some DSPs will contain an ad server, while others will connect to an external one.

Campaign tracker

Campaign trackers collect data about the performance of the campaign, such as impressions, clicks, win notifications, etc. This data is then passed to the reporting database.

Banker

Also known as a cashier or campaign-spending control, a banker is responsible for avoiding campaign overspending. During real-time bidding (RTB) media buys, it’s quite easy to overspend on a budget due to the large number of bids being sent each second, combined with the delay in receiving win notices from supply-side platforms (SSPs) and ad exchanges.

Reporting database

The reporting database stores data collected by the campaign tracker and generates aggregated reports, which are then sent to and display on the user interface.

User profile database

The user profile database stores data about the users, such as which ads they viewed and segments they belong to. This data is then used for things like frequency capping and retargeting.

User interface

The user interface is the screen that advertisers use to create and manage their campaigns – such as setting up targeting, frequency capping, placement, etc. – as well as view reports about the campaign’s performance and budget.

How do DSPs work?

Once an advertiser has set up their campaigns in a DSP, including targeting and creatives (ads), the DSP then bids on impressions offered by ad exchanges and SSPs. So, each time a DSP receives a request from an ad exchange or SSP telling it that there is an impression available, the programmatic ad workflow analyzes the data about the user and decides how much this particular user is worth based on their relevance to the media buyer.

Let’s look at this a bit more through the use of an example:

A user, who is about 30 years old and a big sports fan living in New York, accesses a website. The website sends an ad request to the supply-side platform (SSP), which then sends the request to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then tells the DSPs that an impression is available on a website and starts the bidding process.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and imagine the DSPs have the following targeting parameters set up:

DSP 1: Targets users between 20–30 years of age living in Washington, D.C. who are interested in fashion.

DSP 2: Targets men living in United States who are interested in sport.

DSP 3: Targets users between 30–40 years of age living in New York who are interested in sport.

While all of the above DSPs could potentially gain something out of displaying their digital ad to the user, it is DSP 3 that would gain the most from this ad, as the user fits the target audience perfectly.

As a result, the DSPs would evaluate the ad, match it against their data and target parameters, and would bid on the impression based on this information.

DSP 1: No bid

DSP 2: $1.25 CPM

DSP 3: $1.70 CPM

(CPM = cost per mille, the common unit in advertising, which means cost per thousand impressions. The actual cost of the bid is 1/1000 the cost of the CPM price, as the advertiser is bidding on a single impression, not purchasing a thousand impressions at once.)

Traditionally, ad exchange and SSPs transact using the second-price auction model. In other words, the winner pays the second highest bid price for the impression plus $0.01.

However, over the past few years, the auction dynamics of RTB transactions has changed slightly, with some ad exchanges and SSPs incorporating a first-price auction model.

We’ve written about the different auction dynamics here.

Once an impression is sold, it is sent back to the website and is displayed to the user. This process occurs each time a user accesses a website or refreshes the page.

What advantages do DSPs offer to media buyers?

DSPs traditionally were used as a way to buy remnant (unsold) inventory from publishers, but they are now becoming a way of purchasing available and even premium inventory.

The main reason for this shift in purchasing methods is due to the numerous advantages a DSP provides media buyers. Here are some of the main benefits:

• The opportunity to reach audiences on a lateral and bilateral basis (i.e. they can reach their target audience more effectively plus reach a wider audience).
• The ability to access a larger amount of available inventory and display their ad on a larger number of websites by connecting to a variety of ad exchanges and SSPs.
• Media buyers can manage and optimize the efficiency of their campaigns by adjusting the settings. Examples include blacklisting certain websites and audiences to maintain brand safety, putting limits on the number of times the same ad is displayed to the same user within a determined time frame (frequency capping), retargeting across multiple ad exchanges, and behavioral profiling.
• Built-in automation that handles bidding, pacing, and creative selection without manual intervention.
• The ability to react in real-time to certain outside conditions such as weather, news, stock market activity, allowing the media buyer to serve the most relevant advert to the user.
• The option to integrate 3rd-party data brokers and data management platforms into the DSP to allow media buyers to further optimize their audience targeting capabilities.

The rapid uptake of RTB has seen the number of DSPs in the programmatic ecosystem dramatically increase over recent years, and with the opportunity to build DSPs that incorporate new integrations and advanced features and technology, their popularity is set to increase even further.

How does targeting work in DSPs?

There are a number of ways an advertiser can run targeted ad campaigns with a DSP, but at the heart of it all is data.

For example, an advertiser could target users based on the following data:

Behavioral data: Includes information about the user’s behavior and interests, such as which websites they’ve visited, what products they’ve purchases, which ads they’ve interacted with, etc.

Contextual data: Includes information about the website or mobile app, such as URL, categories, and the content on the page

Demographic data: Includes information about the user’s location, age, job title, gender, and so on.

But how does a DSP access these types of information?

Typically, behavioral and demographic data would need to be imported from a third-party data broker or DMP, or activated from the advertiser’s own first-party data, which would have been collected from a range of online and offline sources. The DSP would sync cookies with the DMP to exchange user data, which can then be used for targeting.

Other types of data, such as contextual data or even user agent data (e.g. browser type, device advertising ID and operating system), are usually passed along during the bid request from the ad exchanges or SSPs.

The benefits of building a custom demand side platform

While there are a number of DSP platforms on the market that offer a range of features for advertisers and agencies, choosing the best demand-side platform for your business sometimes means building one yourself. There are a number of benefits in developing your own custom DSP:

Ownership of data and technology. By building a custom DSP, you can gain control of both technology and data within a unified platform that brings buying, targeting, and reporting together. This is particularly beneficial for advertisers with large advertising campaigns and agencies that purchase large amounts of inventory on behalf of their clients.

Elimination of white-label fees and commissions. While building your own custom DSP won’t eliminate all of the fees and commissions involved in the online media transactions, it will certainly eliminate the known fees and commissions associated with using white-labeled solutions or a managed service, which can be quite a costly expense for a lot of media buyers.

Control of the product’s roadmap. Most DSPs come packed with features, but they are often not a one-size-fits-all platform. For brands and agencies with specific use cases, developing a DSP enables them to have full control over the product roadmap and build the features that they want and need.

FAQ

What is a demand-side platform (DSP)?

A DSP is an AdTech platform that lets advertisers and agencies buy ad inventory programmatically across multiple publishers and channels from a single interface.

What are the top demand-side platform companies?

Amazon DSP, DV360, The Trade Desk, and Yahoo DSP lead the market, followed by Criteo, Adobe Advertising Cloud, Teads, Zeta Global, Viant, and Nexxen.

What are the most popular DSPs?

The Trade Desk, DV360, and Amazon DSP are the most widely adopted, with The Trade Desk dominating the independent open-internet space.

What are the benefits of using a DSP?

DSPs centralize cross-channel buying, automate bidding, and deliver advanced targeting and reporting in one interface.

Final thoughts

The field of DSP is broad and continues to expand. Each platform brings its own strengths, whether in mobile reach, CTV access, cross-channel coverage, or self-service controls. Selecting a good DSP depends on campaign goals, target audiences, and the inventory types that matter most to the business. Evaluating DSPs against these criteria, rather than scale alone, leads to better media outcomes and stronger return on ad spend.

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