Defining Programmatic Advertising: MediaMath DSP

Programmatic Advertising is slowly but steadily evolving, gradually penetrating areas like Connected TV and digital audio advertising, where it is originally less represented.

A study by eMarketer has projected investment in programmatic advertising to hit shy of $100 million in 2022. However, with constantly shifting consumer behaviors and infrastructural changes, marketers are consistently under pressure to develop strategies and partnerships that stand the test of time.

Major trends like Google’s imminent termination of third-party cookies and changes to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) are bound to shake up the programmatic advertising industry. Thus, it has become mission-critical for Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) to develop technologies that deliver consistently in the face of a cookie-less future.

MediaMath is one of the major DSPs making bold strides as a cookie-less future looms over the advertising ecosystem. And right here, we will look at what the MediaMath DSP is and how its technology has become beneficial to marketers in 2022.

About MediaMath (The Company)

Launched in 2007, MediaMath Inc. is an independent ad tech company that helps brands and agencies reach customers through omnichannel advertising.

The company is known to have launched the first (DSP) in the programmatic advertising industry and has since grown into a leading platform in ad tech, with over 500 employees across the world.

With over one-third of fortune 500 companies and more than 9,500 marketers in 42 countries, MediaMath exists to help advertisers build stronger connections with their customers through omnichannel marketing campaigns.

What is MediaMath’s Demand Side Platform (DSP)

A Demand Side Platform essentially bridges the gap between advertisers and publishers, enabling advertisers to bid for digital ad inventory in real-time.

As a leading DSP, MediaMath provides a full suite of functionalities that empowers advertisers to reach and influence their target customers across all screens. MediaMath's DSP is powered by Brain, the platform's proprietary technology that uses AI to accurately predict performance and optimal bid price for ad impressions.

MediaMath’s DSP offers support for all major ID systems, customizable components, and full supply chain control through its SOURCE ecosystem.

As you may have noticed, MediaMath's DSP's functionalities are powered by two core components: Brain and SOURCE. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

The Brain Algorithm

The overarching aim of MediaMath’s Brain algorithm is to help advertisers purchase the best-performing impressions at the best bid prices. This allows them to save more money and generate better ROI from their campaigns.

Brain’s functionalities are categorized into two parts:

The Left Brain: For analyzing historical data around an impression. This helps advertisers to determine the probability of achieving their marketing goals if they purchase a particular impression

The Right Brain: For predicting the best price to purchase an impression

💡Learn more about predicting analytics practices.💡

The SOURCE Ecosystem

In 2019, MediaMath launched SOURCE with 15 anchor partners, including Rubicon, Oracle Data Cloud, and WhiteOps, as well as publishers like News Corp and Business Insider. Today, it houses over 600 publishers and major ad tech partners like LiveRamp and Merkury.

MediaMath rolled out the SOURCE ecosystem in a bid to solve the problems associated with addressability, accountability, and alignment as the industry prepares for a world without 3P cookies.

Through the SOURCE ecosystem, advertisers get access to genuine impressions on real media properties as well as an addressable and engaged consumer base. According to MediaMath, this boosts cost efficiency by 15% by cutting down on media and fraud protection fees.

What are MediaMath DSP’s Capabilities?

MediaMath offers powerful ready-made and custom functionalities for brands and agencies to interact with customers across any screen.

Here are some of its core capabilities:

Targeting— offers a wide variety of targeting options like contextual, audience, 1st party data, site list, location, and video/audio targeting, among others
Intelligence— helps advertisers to make optimal bidding decisions through the Brain algorithm. It also allows advertisers to import their own algorithm for custom business goals
Consumer Segmentation—Allows advertisers to extend their 1st party data through lookalike and modeled audiences
Identity Management—Offers a flexible identity core, allowing marketers to transact on any ID system, including LiveRamp IDL, Merkle, LiveIntent, and more
Campaign Management—Allows advertisers to directly manage and control all aspects of their advertising campaign using features like Dynamic Budget Allocation, Troubleshooting, In-line and bulk editing, and more
Reporting and Measurement—Allows advertisers to test and measure campaigns at scale using its Lift Measurement tool or any third-party integration
Brand Safety—Offers an always-on fraud-protection system for advertisers

Who Uses MediaMath

Over 9,500 marketers in 42 countries across the world use MediaMath to launch, analyze, and optimize campaigns across a wide variety of channels, including display, native, video, audio, mobile, Digital out-of-Home (DOOH) and advanced TV.

The platform serves brands, agencies, tech companies, and content owners in all verticals, including retail, CPG, travel, and finance.

Here are some popular brands and what they achieved using MediaMath:

Lotame—achieved a 31% increase in impressions in all browsers and 22% incremental reach in Chrome using MediaMath's cookieless targeting. The company was able to reach 44% more unique individuals completely without cookies
Balsam Hills—generated a 150% increase in ROI and 78% increase in unique reach through MediaMath's OTT and attribution functionalities
IBM—brought better transparency to the programmatic supply chain using SOURCE. The company also saw a 40% boost in viewability, a decrease in Effective Cost Per Mille (eCPM) rates, and a boost in publisher revenue
Coca-Cola—Achieved an 80% decrease in Cost Per Completed Video Views (CPCV) and a 30 to 70 percent reduction in eCPM across its brands through programmatic advertising using MediaMath
SAS—Increased data providers from 2 to over 60 through MediaMath’s media buying platform. The company also reported an increased conversion rate attributed to improved targeting capabilities

Getting the Best out of MediaMath

The world of advertising has witnessed major trends in the last few years. Marketers are exposed to an overwhelming amount of data and an ever-increasing stack of marketing tools.

A large percentage of these tools offer reporting and measurement capabilities, allowing their users to track and optimize performances and get good results from using them.

But here’s the problem:

Each of these tools has its own measurement and attribution standards. Thus, marketers are forced to learn how to use every single tool for proper analysis and reporting. Furthermore, some of these tools have below-par reporting functionalities.

This is why ETL platforms like Improvado exist.

Improvado is a data integration platform that enables marketers to extract and load data from all their marketing tools to a single destination (usually a data warehouse).

This is a gamechanger because it allows marketers to analyze their entire campaign from a single source, giving them a unified view of their campaign performances.

Improvado offers integration to over 300 data sources, including MediaMath, empowering marketers to make data-driven decisions more efficiently.

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