Ad exchange
An ad exchange is a technology platform that facilitates the buying and selling of online media advertising inventory whose prices are determined through bidding from multiple ad networks. The approach is technology-driven as opposed to the historical approach of negotiating price on media inventory. This represents a field beyond ad networks as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB),[1] and by advertising trade publications such as Advertising Age.[2]
The major ad exchanges include:
- AdECN,[3] which is owned and was purchased by Microsoft in August, 2007 (Microsoft officially switched from AdECN to AppNexus for its real-time bidding needs- three years after it acquired it) This change finally retired the AdECN platform.
- RightMedia,[4] which is owned and was purchased by Yahoo! in April 2007;
- DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which is owned by DoubleClick,[5] a Google subsidiary purchased in May 2007;
Second generation ad exchanges include OpenX and AppNexus.
Ad exchanges can be useful to both buyers (advertisers and agencies) and sellers (online publishers) because of the efficiencies they provide.[6]