In September 2009, the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange (ADX), built on Google technology, opened for business with support for real-time bidding (RTB). Since then, we’ve witnessed explosive growth in RTB. For example, RTB spend as a percent of spend on ADX has risen from 8% in January 2010 to 68% as of May 2011. Plus, the volume of impressions purchased via RTB for the first half of 2011 is 6.4x that of the first half of 2010.

At Google, we believe that the overall display advertising pie can get bigger and see RTB as one of the technologies that can help get us there. In February 2011, we did a “Real-Time Display Advertising State of the Industry Survey” with Digiday, which found that advertisers and agencies are reporting that they will spend more on digital advertising in 2011 because of the benefits of RTB.

To help buyers achieve the benefits they expect from RTB, we’ve published a white paper that shares our view of real-time bidding for online display advertising. Based on research and primary interviews with Google’s RTB experts across our product, sales and services organizations, this paper provides a clear definition of what real-time bidding is and how buyers can get involved with it. Whether you are a large or small advertiser, an agency or a trading desk or a media buying intermediary, Google would like to help you succeed with real-time bidding. We hope that this paper helps.

Download the free white paper (PDF)

Update posted 8/4/2011: Figure 1 in this white paper was missing the demand-side platform LucidMedia. We have now added them.

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager