DSP
A DSP (Demand-Side Platform) automates buying ad impressions from many SSPs and exchanges at once through real-time bidding (RTB). A buyer or ad network sets targeting and a bid price, and the DSP decides where and at what price to buy each impression.
How a DSP works
A DSP gets a bid request from an SSP for an available impression, runs an auction among advertisers based on their bids and targeting, and hands the impression to the winner — all within a fraction of a second as the page loads. The resulting CPM depends on competition for that specific audience at that moment, not a fixed rate.
DSPs in PWA arbitrage
For a buyer, a push or native network's self-serve dashboard is effectively a DSP interface — you set the bid and targeting, and the platform competes for the impression on the SSP side in real time. Because pricing is auction-driven, cost and volume can shift within the same day, so it pays to validate a creative-plus-prelander combo on a small budget first — APEX split-tests with sticky visitor bucketing do this fast, without waiting out an auction price climb.
FAQ
- How is a DSP different from a regular ad network?
- A classic network usually sells traffic at a fixed or semi-fixed price, while a DSP buys impressions through real-time auctions across many SSPs at once. In practice, most self-serve push and native network dashboards blend both approaches.
- Does a buyer need to configure a DSP directly?
- Rarely — most buyers work through a network's self-serve dashboard that's already wired into DSP infrastructure. Going deeper into DSP setup directly only makes sense when buying straight from large programmatic platforms.
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