Ad technology, or ad tech for short, is the umbrella term encompassing all the software used by advertising and marketing agencies, advertisers, and publishers in the strategic roll-out of digital advertising campaigns.
It includes platforms, networks and other tools that allow brands to target, deliver, and analyse their advertising efforts.
Since its beginnings in the early 1990s, the ad tech sector has grown rapidly and now constitutes the infrastructure of online advertising worldwide. Last year, the global ad tech market was valued at over $US 719 billion, and by 2030, the value of the market is projected to reach $US 1580.86 billion, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4% from this year to 2030.
North America remains the largest market today, but the Asia-Pacific region has become the fastest-growing market, while others, such as the Middle East-Africa and European markets, continue to display impressive growth from one year to the next. As for the types of advertising that the sector encompasses, search advertising dominates the market, followed by mobile phone advertising.
Ad Tech Industry Statistics 2025
For a clearer overview of the ad tech sector and the factors that are likely to influence its development over the coming years, here are some points worth noting.
What’s Driving the Growth of Ad Tech?
- Increasing demand for data-driven ad solutions
- Advancements in programmatic advertising
- Integration of machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) into standard advertising practices.
What Are the Latest Statistics on Ad Tech?
- Demand side platforms (DSPs) dominated the market last year with a revenue share of 33%.
- Data management platforms (DMPs) are set to be another key element in the ad tech sector, with their CAGR forecast to hit 15.6% from this year to 2030.
- By 2032, the global ad tech market could be worth $US1.5 – 2.5 trillion.
What Are the Predictions for Ad Tech?
- Live event advertising will be the new focus of streaming TV
- Quality and transparency standards in programmatic advertising will continue to grow
- The demise of cookies will require investment in alternative solutions for addressability
- Environmental sustainability will become one of the touchstones for advertisers
- Supply-side innovation will drive greater value across the ad tech sector
The Evolution of Ad Tech
Given that so much of daily life nowadays involves online activities, many of us take for granted the ads that seem to know just what we’re interested in and when we’re most interested in it.
Such level of personalisation is made possible by ad tech, and thanks to recent developments in machine learning and other forms of AI, the crucial role played by the sector in modern advertising is only going to continue growing. This year, for example, global digital ad spend is expected to grow to $US 678.7 billion, which will account for almost 70 per cent of total global ad investments.
But it can be easy to forget that the modern digital advertising landscape hasn’t always rested on the solid foundation of ad tech. Here’s a snapshot of how modern ad tech began and evolved into the ubiquitous infrastructure that silently powers today’s online ad industry.
Early 1990s
In 1994, AT&T became the first organisation to promote its services through a banner ad. It was a pioneering move, and, as is often the case when new ground is broken, others – namely, Microsoft and the tech magazine Wired– quickly moved in with their own initiatives.
That same year, Microsoft began tracking user behavior online by using cookies through its web browser Netscape – another initiative that helped, in its own way, to bring about the personalised ads we see today. Then Wired became the first publication to host an online ad campaign, a banner ad campaign for AT&T.
Mid 1990s
Although banner ads had proliferated by the middle of the decade, the online ad landscape was, in many ways, just a digital version of the conventional ad industry – advertisers bought online ads in much the same way as they bought ad space in, say, a magazine or a time slot on a TV or radio channel.
This changed in 1995 when FocaLink Media Services developed the first ad server, which simplified and accelerated the management and delivery of online ads. Instead of engaging the services of an ad executive, who would organise the publication of online ads, advertisers could now speed up this task by relying on software to do the job for them.
The following year, DoubleClick, a company providing both ad network and ad server services, established itself as a major player in the online ad world. Like ad technology itself, this company would also evolve, eventually becoming the platform that, today, is used by publishers around the world:Google Ads Manager.
To make the selling and buying of online ad space easier, the era also included the establishment of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which set out – and still regulates – the formats of online ad space, as well as the general practices for buying and selling online ad space.
Early – mid 2000s
By the turn of the 21 st century, online advertising had become as commonplace as conventional advertising, yet more work was needed to make the former, where possible, more effective than the latter.
Such work was done in several waves. First came the launch of Google AdWords in 2000, which, through keyword-based bidding, revolutionised the way ads were targeted at specific audiences. Its adoption by advertisers and publishers then led to the emergence and development of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which afforded organiations even greater precision in their ad campaigns.
By the mid 2000s, the forerunners of today’s ad exchanges entered the online ad world, and they, in turn, were quickly followed by the first DSPs, DMPs and SSPs, which eventually gave us the ad tech ecosystem we have today.
2020s
The latest AI-powered tools promise to help advertisers and publishers maximise their ROI while, at the same time, ensuring their compliance with key data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the US.
Why Ad Tech Matters for Publishers
- Maximise revenue
- Sales automation
- Broaden partnerships
- Improve UX
Why Ad Tech Matters for Advertisers
- Better ad spend
- Campaign efficiency
- Greater insight across the marketing funnel:
Arten von Ad-Tech-Software
To achieve their specific goals, advertisers and publishers use different tools and platforms.
1. Ad Server
In the past, ad servers were used to host and store ads and serve them on publisher's sites. Today, ad servers have evolved as platforms that combine several services. They launch ad campaigns, manage website placements, and match publishers and advertisers.
Ad servers also work to collect key ad data metrics to enable publishers to optimise their campaigns successfully.
Adserver ermöglichen den gesamten Kauf- und Verkaufsprozess von Medien, ohne dass der HTML-Code von Webseiten geändert werden muss.
There are two types of ad servers; first-party ad servers that publishers use to sell inventory, and third-party servers that are used by advertisers to launch, manage and optimise their digital advertising campaigns.
2. Demand-Side Platform (DSP)
Demand-Side Platforms allow users to buy ad inventory from various ad exchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs). They play an integral role in real-time bidding(RTB), where they are the receiver of the browser's request for ad serving.
This ad tech tool offers more automation options than ad servers. Advertisers can set their targeting preferences,CPM, and launch their campaign without having to negotiate prices with the publishers directly.
Furthermore, DSPs offer bidding rules, multipliers, and other optimisation tools that allow advertisers to automatically optimise their campaigns
There are two choices when it comes to DSPs:
- Self-Serve DSPs: Self-serve DSPs are typically offered by ad tech providers and are the quickest way for advertisers to get started in trading ads programmatically. Self-serve DSPs allow advertisers to trade ads and optimise campaigns independently without any assistance from third-party professionals in the ad tech industry.
- White Label DSPs: White Label DSPs are a SaaS platform that can be customised and branded as the advertisers own. Unlike Self-serve DSPs, the white label solution allows integration with custom SSPs, giving advertisers complete control over their campaigns, including where their traffic comes from, and access to all data transmitted from publishers.
3. Supply-side Platform (SSP)
Supply-side platforms sit on the other side of the demand-side platform exchange. SSPs are ad tech software leveraged by publishers to manage, sell, and optimise inventory on their websites and mobile apps.
As with DSPs, SSPs work on an RTB protocol, whereby publishers include an ad tag or a header on their web pages, so each time someone visits their website, an ad request is sent.
The tag is sent to the SSP, which processes the publisher's data and then sends it on the DSP to request a suitable ad.
The DSP matches the publisher's audience with the advertiser's targeting, selecting the highest bidder in the process.
4. Agency Trading Desk (ATD)
An agency trading desk (ATD) is a simplified form of a DSP for users that may not be ready to invest in a DSP or in-house ad tech team.
An ATD comprises a whole toolset provided by media agencies for planning, buying, and managing omnichannel marketing campaigns. An ATD employs staff that acts in place of an in-house media buying team. This means, however, that advertisers using an ATD don't have direct access to the ad inventory.
5. Ad Exchanges
When online advertising exploded on the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s, websites began to sell an increasing amount of ad space to advertisers. Before publishers knew it, they were dealing with millions of impressions and thousands of ad agencies. From this demand,ad networks were born;companies that aggregate websites with comparable inventory into bundles, essentially centralising the ad purchase process. The development of this advertising technology allowed advertisers to buy a large number of ads and meet their impression targets.
Ad Exchanges are the conduit between DSPs and SSPs and are generally leveraged by large ad tech companies in the ad serving process. While advertisers and publishers will rarely access the ad exchange, their inventory will generally pass through this platform on its journey to the ad space.
6. Data Management Platform (DMP)
Data Management Platforms (DMPs) are a form of technology that allows a company to understand its consumers' behaviors. Generally, a data management platform will allow for the collection of consumer data from several sources:
- Tags auf Websites
- Tags in mobilen Apps
- Kekse
- APIs
- S2S integrations
This data is the essential information available to marketers; it allows them to optimise their advertising to deliver highly relevant content to their consumers. Specifically, data in ad tech can be used for:
- Namensnennung
- Campaign optimisations
- Identifikation
- Berichterstattung
- Zielen
7. Customer Data Platform
The CDP Institute defines a Customer Data Platform as ‘packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.' Essentially a CDP is a single system that centralises user data for use in ad tech campaigns. CDPs collect both third-party data and first-party data obtained by consent.
Although Google has abandoned its decision to phase out third-party cookies, CDPs will likely see increased adoption as ad tech vendors and networks will have to rely on first-party data collection to obtain user data.
8. Inventory and Ad Quality Scanning Tools
Despite increased industry awareness and Google penalties,ad fraud is still prevalent in the ad tech business, with certain studies showing that around 37% of ads are impacted by ad fraud.
Malicious advertising – or malvertising–spreads viruses and compromises systems, while some traffic sources are almost entirely driven by bots.
Inventory and ad quality scanning tools help combat these threats by verifying the ad and traffic legitimacy before it is served to a website.
Programmatic Advertising in der Ad-Tech-Branche
Programmatic advertising, the process of automatically buying and selling digital advertising space, has been a game-changer when it comes to ad tech solutions.
Programmatic advertising offers the following benefits:
1. Ability to scale
2. Real-time flexibility
3. Targeting capabilities
4. Efficiency
To learn more about how Publift leverages ad tech to grow our client's revenue, check out our case studies.
How Does Ad Tech Work?
To fully appreciate how ad tech works, it’s worth outlining the process of how an online ad is actually displayed. Below is a snapshot of the key steps in the process, using the example of the Adidas sporting brand.
1. A person interested in Adidas footwear visits a football news website or opens a mobile sports betting app.
2. Upon entering the site or opening the app, if the person allows the site or app to track their behavior, the site or app’s ad server detects an available ad slot, which triggers the creation of a bid request – a piece of code containing detailed information about the ad slot.
3. This bid request, along with data about the visitor’s demographics, their online behavior and the device they’re using, is sent by the ad server to its ad decision engine, which analyses the bid request and the data about the visitor.
4. This bid request and data are forwarded for real-time bidding to the publisher’s supply-side platform (SSP).
5. Through an ad exchange, the SSP passes on the bid request and data to a corresponding demand-side platform (DSP).
6. Adidas and other advertisers on the DSP offer their bids, through the ad exchange, for the ad slot.
7. Adidas wins the bid and an appropriate Adidas ad is displayed to the visitor on the website or app.
8. The visitor will, ideally, click on the ad. If they don’t, retargeting tactics, such as using the same ad in a sticky ad format, can be used to encourage the visitor to click on the ad.
AdTech Benefits for Publishers
We’ve examined why ad tech matters to both publishers and advertisers, but here’s a quick recap of the benefits that it offers for publishers, in particular.
Einnahmen
- Maximise revenue: Given its nature as the foundation for real-time bidding, as well as the use of SSPs, ad tech enables publishers to maximise the prices they can obtain for their inventory at any given point in time.
- Wider pool of advertisers: Thanks to ad exchanges and DSPs, publishers have access to a broad range of advertisers, affording them the greatest opportunity to maximise the revenue from their inventory.
Operational Efficiency
- Less manual work: Given its automation of ad placement, inventory management, and reporting, ad tech reduces the load of manual work for publishers.
- Ad sales simplified: With its use of ad exchanges, SSPs and DSPs, ad tech streamlines the whole process of buying and selling ad space.
- Data-based optimisation: By employing real-time bidding, ad tech affords publishers access to real-time analytics and other data, allowing them to optimise ad placements and overall campaign management.
Content Control
- Targeted ads: Because of its focus on the demographics and online behavior of users, ad tech allows publishers to display ads that are tailored to user preferences.
- Tracking devices: Ad tech allows publishers to track audiences across devices and channels, enabling them to offer advertisers the opportunity for comprehensive ad campaigns.
- Ad filtering: Brand safety is of paramount importance to advertisers. Through ad exchanges, ad tech offers publishers the ability to block potentially damaging ads from appearing on their site, ensuring brand safety for the other advertisers on their site.
Examples of Ad Tech in Action
For a clearer idea of how ad technology can help publishers and advertisers, here are a couple of examples of ad tech in action.
Header Bidding
Header bidding is the selling of ad space in real-time in which publishers auction their inventory to several ad exchanges, which bid for the highest price.
A chef, for instance, may visit the website of a cooking tools manufacturer. As the homepage of the site begins to load, an auction is triggered. In ad tech parlance, the code in the header of the page is called a wrapper, which contacts ad exchanges and DSPs and encourages them to make a bid within milliseconds. DSPs and ad exchanges conduct their own auctions, and once the winning bid has been registered, the ad servers of the advertiser and publisher are connected with one another, which then enables the winning ad to be displayed to the chef.
Ad Retargeting
With ad retargeting, website visitors or app users are shown tailored ads of brands they previously interacted with but didn’t buy from. A common form of retargeting is pixel-based retargeting.
A surfer looking for a new surfboard, for instance, may visit the website of a surfboard retailer. As the surfer browses the retailer’s extensive range of surfboards, a small tracking pixel from the relevant ad network or DSP is placed on the surfer’s browser cookies to record the surfer’s interest in surfboards. Data from the surfer’s interaction with the site is sent to an ad network, which creates a user profile.
The surfer eventually leaves the site without buying a board. However, when he visits another website, the ad network will show him an ad for a surfboard he reviewed at the previous site, encouraging him to return to that site and purchase the surfboard.
Ad Tech vs. MarTech
Ad Tech
Ad tech, as we’ve learnt, refers to the various technologies that enable the planning and delivering of online ad content. By employing programmatic advertising and its use of real-time bidding, ad tech allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad space. It also allows them to closely monitor and adjust ad content on multiple websites and apps, depending on its performance.
Mar Tech
Mar tech refers to the various technologies that serve to automate and analyse marketing tasks and processes. Mar tech helps marketing professionals to better understand and engage with target audiences.
Challenges & Limitations of Ad Tech
Ad tech has clearly made the business of buying and selling ad space easier, and using it effectively is critical to the success of any ad or marketing campaign. However, like other technologies, it also offers challenges and limitations, especially for those who may be new to it.
Here are three common challenges and limitations in the world of ad tech, and the best ways to resolve them.
Anzeigenbetrug
Ad fraud is the deliberate generation of fake traffic, impressions, clicks, or conversions wherever digital ads are displayed. It can also take the form of domain spoofing, in which low-quality websites masquerade as high-quality websites in order to deceive advertisers into paying for high-rate ad placements.
As it can take many forms, preventing ad fraud requires a comprehensive strategy. Here are some key ways to prevent it.
- Ad fraud detection tools
- Set up ad monitoring systems
- Work with reputable ad networks
- Educate employees
- Privacy and Regulations
Transparenz
Given the many vendors and intermediaries that operate in programmatic advertising supply chains, various fees, charges and mark-ups are an inherent part of ad tech. These vendors and intermediaries operate as businesses in their own right, which means that their fees, charges and mark-ups are perfectly legitimate. However, their sheer number in the ad tech landscape means that many advertisers are paying more than they probably should for their ad placements.
One way to ensure that advertisers pay a reasonable price for their ad placements is to use the IAB’s Programmatic Fee Transparency Calculator.
Complexity and Costs
The myriad functions and features that are now available on most ad tech platforms have afforded advertisers and publishers with advantages that were unimaginable when ad tech first emerged in the early 1990s. But with the development and increasing application of these platforms has come a level of complexity that can be daunting, even for experienced users of ad tech. And with such complexity also comes an increase in costs.
To minimise such complexity and costs, it’s worth considering your business’s specific needs when displaying ads in a campaign. Be honest, not just with what your business needs to ensure campaign efficiency but also with the types of tools your employees will be comfortable working with, given their skills and experience with ad tech in general.
Trends and the Future of Ad Tech
Since its emergence in the early 1990s, ad tech has played a crucial role in the development of modern advertising, and its further evolution testifies to the continuing importance it’ll play over the coming years.
Apart from the growing use of AI and the importance of environmental sustainability we’ve touched on, along with the growing focus on first-party data and the cookieless future we’re moving towards, here are several other trends and predictions that are worth keeping an eye on.
Trends
- Influence of digital natives
- Creative approaches to digital channels
- Video ad campaigns
- Predictions
Location-based advertising:
The value of the global location-based ad market is expected to be $75.8 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 17.4 % from 2023 to 2030. This highlights the role that geo data will play in ad tech over the coming years.
Growth of retail media:
By 2028, retail media expenditure is expected to make up 60 % of the growth in digital ad spending. This increase will be spurred by retail brands increasing their focus on audience data to create more effective campaigns.
Convergence of ad tech and mar tech:
The boundaries between ad tech and mar tech are increasingly blurring, which is likely to lead to more efficient ad strategies. In particular, it will also lead to customer journeys across different touchpoints being seamless, which will only encourage more brand loyalty,
Der Einsatz von Ad-Tech ist in den letzten Jahren rasant gestiegen und zeigt keine Anzeichen einer Verlangsamung. Da die Branche weiter wächst, können Medienagenturen von verbesserten und saubereren Integrationen, mehr Datenaustausch und größerer Reichweite über alle Werbekanäle hinweg profitieren.
Publift makes programmatic advertising easy for publishers with our Sicherung platform. Whether you are looking to monetise a single site or a significant publishing network, we can help lift your revenue with our next-level ad tech solutions. With an average 55% growth in net revenue within six months of using Fuse, we help our clients get results.
If you're making more than $2,000 in monthly ad revenue,contact us today to learn more about how Publift can help increase your ad revenue and best optimise the ad space available on your website or app.
FAQs Section
What is the difference between Ad Tech and MarTech?
Ad tech refers to technologies used to plan and deliver online ads. Mar tech, in contrast, refers to technologies that are used to automate and analyse marketing tasks and processes.
Is Ad Tech the same as programmatic advertising?
No. Ad tech refers to all of the technology that enables online ads to be created and displayed, as well as their exchange between advertisers and publishers. Programmatic advertising, on the other hand, is a part of ad tech, which focuses on the automation of the buying and selling of ads and ad inventory.
How do publishers benefit from Ad Tech?
Publishers benefit from ad tech by opening their ad inventory to a large pool of advertisers, and then using programmatic advertising to simplify and automate the buying and selling of ad space, which maximises their revenue.
What is an example of an Ad Tech platform?
Demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and ad exchanges are examples of ad tech platforms, as they function as intermediaries between advertisers and publishers.
What are the biggest challenges in Ad Tech?
Some of the biggest challenges in ad tech are preventing ad fraud, maintaining transparency in ad tech supply chains and managing the complexity and costs of different ad tech platforms.