The digital marketplace is the go-to destination for businesses looking to get their products in front of broad audiences nowadays. According to HubSpot , as many as 68% of marketers stated they found their paid online advertising endeavors a vital part of their marketing strategy. But how do brands get their ads out there? Surely they don’t wish upon a shooting star and have the ads magically pop up on Google, right? Of course they don’t. They get their ads online through ad network integration.

But what is ad network integration, what are ad networks, and how do they work in the first place? That’s what you’re going to find out! Let’s start from the basics.

An ad network is a term used for online platforms that mediate the online ad distribution process between publishers and advertisers (e.g., display ad networks ). Ad networks only exist in the online world, and they do all the dirty work in putting your banner or video ads on someone else’s website or video.

So what happens when you sign up for an ad network as an online advertiser? You purchase ad space (also known as ad inventory ) that various publishers put up “for rent.” It’s almost like getting yourself a billboard. However, instead of renting that ad space for a specific amount of time, you get it for a limited number of impressions .

Ad networks make everyone’s lives easier. Instead of having to look for websites or publishers to sell your inventory directly , you can just sign up with an ad network or a DSP and let them handle everything for you.

How Do Ad Networks Work?

An ad network takes a publisher’s available ad inventory and sells it to advertisers on a per-impression basis. Here’s a step-by-step overview of how ad networks function:

Having one ad network was sufficient for most publishers in the early days of online advertising due to the much lower number of websites online. However, since everyone is jumping on the digital advertising bandwagon, and there are over 1.5 billion websites on the internet today, the demand for online ads has become much higher than the supply .

That is why many publishers utilize more ad networks simultaneously to maximize their fill rates . Features like ad tag waterfalling help them with that immensely, but remember not to get discouraged if you don’t reach your goal; it’s next to impossible to achieve a 100% fill rate . Most ad networks promise publishers a 25%–50% fill rate , so as long as you’re within that range, you’re getting what you paid for.

TargetVideo’s video platform also supports advanced monetization and targeting features like GEO ad targeting , ad waterfalling , header bidding , and ad pods . All TargetVideo users can also track their ad performance through our advanced ad analytics . All of these features exist to help our users streamline their monetization processes and maximize fill rates.

Not a TargetVideo user yet? Join our platform today!

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