According to Wikipedia, “online advertising, also called online marketing or internet advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.”

Certainly many readers have used web advertising for many years, finding one or several forms more effective, easier to use, financially favourable, and so on.

Of great interest is the recent rise of what is known as “programmatic advertising”. This term, a.k.a. programmatic media or programmatic marketing, “encompasses an array of technologies that automate the buying, placement, and optimization of media inventory, in turn replacing human-based methods.” (https://www.adclarity.com).

This actually works similarly to a stock market – where computerized systems sell online ad space to advertisers and their agencies, essentially trading space instead of shares (Online Advertising Picks up Speed, Globe and Mail, Saturday, June 27, 2015). In fact, 50% of global spending on digital display ads is automated now, one of the biggest exchanges being Google Adx. This process offers cost savings and better targeting. Automatic auctions take place, where purchasers bid on a certain type of audience and space on particular web sites. This is done in several ways, such as “real time bidding”, where advertisers register to advertise according to parameters such as price, target audience, etc., a computer on line auction takes place, and the ad of the winning bidder show up on a website, guaranteed prices via a digital exchange, or fully automated auctions.

Many advertisers still find the whole thing confusing: such as figuring how demand-side (buy-side) platforms
where buyers used to buy ads in the marketplace in a less automated manner are giving way to Ad Exchanges where buyers now meet sellers via supply-side automated platforms, automated on both sides.

A good chart indicating how all of this works can be found at the iabcanada site (https://iabcanada.com/guidelines/programmatic-landscape/), illustrating the Canadian Programmatic Landscape.

What you may also want to know is that programmatic advertising will account for close to ¼ of the $50 Billion USD advertising marketplace this year (https://adage.com/article/print-edition/10-things-programmatic-buying/298811/), encompassing TV, web, PC, mobile, social networks, and all manner of campaigns.

Take for example, Adobe, which we all know, talking about “Adobe Media Optimizer”,” a programmatic ad-buying solution that helps you forecast the best mix of search, display and social ads based on your budget. It also automates the execution of your media plan and helps you find the best way to deliver relevant content to your high-value audiences” (https://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud/online-advertising-management.html).

Also through re-targeting, buyers can fine-tune / target their audiences extremely effectively, advertising to the few people seriously looking for their product. I am sure if you have done some comparative shopping on the web lately for anything, e.g. hotel, washing machine, etc., you will then notice pertinent, focused ads showing up whenever you are on line. And of course, with analytics, this is all becoming more and more sophisticated.
Soon Siri will find you what you want in milliseconds!