Life of an Ad Request

Publishers can add a "tag" (JavaScript snippets) in the webpage. When a user visits a page, it will trigger an ad request.

Extract signals

Process the request and extract signals:

• Content signals: what's shown in the page/app/video, additional publisher data not included in this ad request
• User signals: user location, interest, device, language; sometimes with the help from a DMP, Data Management Platform

The signals are used to:

• Target relevant ads on the page and optimize revenue
• Respect advertiser / publisher constraints

Ad Targeting

Find the best ad candidates:

• brand safety, both for advertisers and publishers (e.g. check for adult material, alcohol, drugs, weapons, etc)
• eligible ads according to the publisher preferences
• check budget
• ranked based on the signals

Auction

Select the winning ads

Retrieve

Retrieve creatives of the winning ads

Post-processing

e.g. logging

Return and Render

Send a response to frontend and render the ads (e.g. HTML5 snippets)

Track conversions

Impressions, clicks, conversions.