Browsing the internet, playing your favourite online game in mobile, watching videos, you see ads flashing everywhere. They are on every well-known site you visit today and on every free trending app that you download from the store. Not just sites, but ads have spread its wings across various devices; from your Smart TV to mobile phones, and on your most-loved media boxes like Apple TV or Roku!
You see ads prior and after every free video that you watch on the sites like YouTube. Display, Social Media, Video, there are ample formats and these advertisements are even using several new and unique ways of telling a story to convince the users to purchase their products and services. Advertisements are looking more and more like TV ads with each passing day.
Ever thought why the advertisements are always so appropriate and rightly timed? Have you ever wondered how you keep on seeing the ads of hotels in Vegas on every website you visit after you finished researching about the hotels in Vegas only in one site? It is just like you imagine something and it is displayed in front of your eyes.
We are moving towards a scarier or clever time where technology is used for analysing, predicting, and tracking your behaviours and assist various industry fronts to monetize through ad delivery. There is a whole industry working behind getting the correct ads displayed to the right audiences at the right point of time’ watching every move of the consumer.
Part of this magic happens because of these video platforms, websites, also known as Publishers, that use something known as Ad Server for tracking, measuring, and delivering ads to the right audience at the right time and format.
Let us have a look at what Ad Servers are:
Ad Server is a combo of server and ad software that manages, stores, delivers, and tracks ads in different formats that include images, text, video or audio, across different devices like mobile sites, websites, and various apps on smart TV’s.
Publishers and Advertisers handle their ads and reports from a provided interface in the ad server. Ad servers also track different user activities like geography and location, browsers, devices, total number of views, operating system, total number of click, which ad is being viewed, whether any action is being taken on the advertiser’s site and makes a report, so that the advertisements can further be customized for better serving and delivering a better ROI to the publisher as well as the advertiser.
The Difference Between an Ad Network and an Ad Server
While Ad Server is defined as a technology that allows advertisers and publishers to manage their ads, that ranges from setting up an ad server to monitoring and managing their ads. On the contrary, Ad network is a company that helps advertisers to find the right publishing platform for placing their ads. Unlike an Ad server, ad network comes with its own reporting, tracking, and managing system that keeps sellers and buyers away from the worry of handling ads. On the other hand, Ad servers are a part of Ad networks.