The online advertising ecosystem consists of companies, technology systems, and complex technical processes all working together to serve ads to online users across the Internet. Online advertising has brought with it a number of positives. For one, it’s provided content creators with a source of revenue so they can distribute their content for free to online users. It’s also allowed new and existing media and technology businesses to grow and thrive.
However, while the online advertising industry has experienced a number of ups, there have also been many downs. Some key examples include being hit hard by the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and more recently, the introduction of privacy laws (e.g. the GDPR) and privacy settings in browsers (e.g. Safari’s Intelligent Track Prevention) that have negatively impacted advertisers, AdTech companies, and publishers.
The platforms and processes that make up AdTech are highly complex and there are very few resources out there that explain in an easy-to-understand and transparent way how online advertising works from both a fundamental and technical perspective.
The AdTech Book
The first few chapters of the book introduce the history of online advertising and set the scene for the subsequent chapters. Clearcode covers the fundamentals of digital advertising and then slowly start to introduce the platforms, intermediaries, and technical processes. Chapters include:
- Introduction
- Advertising Basics
- The History of Digital Advertising Technology
- The Main Technology Platforms and Intermediaries in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
- The Main Advertising Mediums and Channels
- Ad Serving
- Ad Targeting and Budget Control
- Tracking and Reporting Impressions, Clicks, and Conversions in AdTech Platforms
- Media Buying Methods: Programmatic, Real-Time Bidding (RTB), Header Bidding, and PMP
- User Identification
- Data Management Platforms (DMPs) and Data Usage
- Attribution
- Ad Fraud and Viewability
- User Privacy in Digital Advertising
- AdTech from the Vendors’ and Agencies’ Perspective
The team at Clearcode – a company that designs, develops, launches, and maintains AdTech and MarTech software – wrote The AdTech Book as a straightforward resource for anyone to understand digital advertising technology.
The online publication is a free resource that the team is keeping updated. You can access it here:
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