SSP
An SSP (Supply-Side Platform) lets publishers and ad networks sell available inventory to many DSPs at once, maximizing revenue per impression through auction. For a buyer, the SSP usually sits hidden behind the ad network's own interface, but it decides which supply pool the traffic actually comes from.
How an SSP works
An SSP collects impressions from publishers, sets a floor price, and offers them to multiple DSPs through auction at once, handing the impression to whichever bid is highest. The same placement often sells inventory through several SSPs simultaneously so it isn't dependent on one demand channel.
SSPs and traffic quality in PWA arbitrage
An SSP optimizes for publisher revenue, not buyer traffic quality — a bot, a datacenter IP, or an off-target visitor can technically still clear the auction as an impression. That's why filtering on your own side isn't optional: APEX's built-in cloaking, antibot, and IP checks strip out bots and datacenter traffic before it ever reaches the prelander, regardless of how clean the SSP's own auction was.
FAQ
- Does a buyer need to understand SSPs in depth?
- Not really — for day-to-day work it's enough to know that an auction on the SSP side sits behind the ad network's interface. That alone explains why traffic volume and price shift even when the campaign itself hasn't changed.
- Why can traffic quality from the same SSP vary day to day?
- Because the mix of publishers and audiences selling impressions through that SSP keeps changing, and the auction itself doesn't guarantee clean traffic. The fix is filtering on your own side and watching source-level stats continuously.
Cloaking, anti-bot, push, split tests and your own domains — in one service.
Get started free