What is the Ad Server?
As an online publisher, running ads is probably one of the main ways you monetize your website. However, putting ads on your site can be a daunting endeavor. Therefore it’s important to understand the different terms that come along with display advertising.
Today we’re going to talk a little bit about ad servers.
An ad server is a web-based technology that stores, maintains and serves advertisements to website visitors when a page is loaded. Ad servers order all of a publisher’s demand partners in the most profitable waterfall.
Simply put, ad servers help publishers efficiently manage all of the ad space on their site.
Website owners, also known as publishers, that want to monetize their website, may use an ad server to manage their ad inventory and ad space. A well developed ad manager, or admanager, will have a user-friendly interface allowing publishers to quickly load and edit their campaigns, add any necessary delivery parameters and targeting criteria to them, and create reports that can be shared with their advertisers.
Advertisers use an adserver for advertiser to track the performance of their ads across multiple websites. This way, they can have more in depth understanding on the effectiveness of their ads and also know in what locations they are performing better. In the same way, ad agencies use an adserver for agency to track the performance of their client’s ads.
Ad networks, acting as the middleman between publishers and advertisers, use an ad server for network to manage campaigns of their advertisers, distribute those ads on the website of their publishers, provide ad performance reporting for all parties involved, and report the payout for their publishers and the expense of their advertisers.
