Supply-side platform (SSP)

A technology platform or software that manages a publisher’s ad impression inventory across multiple ad exchanges. SSPs are effective marketing tools because they automate and optimize the sales of a publisher’s media space, helping to fill it with ads and generate revenue.

What are supply-side platforms?

SSPs help publishers automate the selling, managing, and optimizing of their ad inventory on the web and on mobile devices.

Before SSPs, publishers needed to manually manage and sell their ad space. However, this left them unable to scale their selling processes and guarantee that ad spaces were filled. 

At first, publishers used supply-side platforms to fill leftover inventory at lower prices. However, today, SSPs are responsible for the programmatic selling of all ad inventory.

How do supply-side platforms work?

Did you ever stop and think about the ads Google serves you? 

While it seems like Google knows you a little too well, it’s actually sharing your user behavior with both the advertiser (DSP) and the publisher (SSP), so they can serve you the right ads — and all in real-time. 

SSPs facilitate the relationship between the publisher and the advertiser. They can send available ad impressions to as many potential buyers as possible with the aim of selling the publisher’s inventory at the best price. 

The functionality of the SSP offers advertisers the chance to purchase these ad impressions across a variety of different publisher sites, which are all targeted to specific users, and based on users’ key online identifiers and behaviors.

Based on a publisher’s content and visitors, advertisers will bid to place their ads on those sites. This happens because the publisher’s SSP offers its available impressions. The advertiser’s DSP will analyze these in real-time — and the result is perfectly placed ads served to the right user.