Understanding DFP from a user’s perspective

DFP, Double-click For Publishers owned by Google, is an ad server.

What is an ad server?

An ad server is like an insurance website. You enter your details and your requirements. Then the website will come back with a quote that fits the criteria. In a similar way, a publisher’s website wishing to display ads will call an ad server along with some requirements. Then the ad server will return an ad that fits the criteria.

Let us use the famous Piccadilly Circus advertising panels as an example. A panel is the equivalent of an ad unit in DFP. Each panel could show a Samsung ad or Coca Cola ad (the ad content is known as a creative in DFP), or the panels could form a group together to act as a gigantic single screen (known as placement in DFP).

A Coca Cola campaign in action

When there is special event like the New Year Eve countdown, the countdown timer would replace the default ads. Similarly Coca Cola could run a campaign when they take over all the panels for one-hour. It is the job of the ad server (e.g. DFP) to work out the rules of precedence. These rules would be represented as conditional triggers (equivalent of line items in DFP) in the form of “IF {condition} THEN display {creative X} HAS priority value {Y}”. For example:

• IF time is half an hour to New Year midnight THEN display countdown timer HAS priority 0
• IF Coca Cola has paid for a one-hour campaign to run at 3pm and the time is 3pm THEN display Coca Cola ad on all panels HAS priority 1
• Display Samsung ad HAS priority 2

At any one time, there could be thousands of conditional triggers. The ad server must be fast enough to evaluate these triggers as fast as possible. Creating these conditions is the role of an AdOps manager who would configure them via the DFP management console.

Lenticular cards — a different angle shows a different image

In online advertising, the ad server is capable of leveraging much more complex triggering conditions. Imagine one day new technology makes it possible for the Piccadilly panels to display different content when viewed from different angles, like lenticular cards, thus one person will see different content to the person standing next to him. Furthermore, every person can send their personal data to the ad server. Then the ad server can create high-relevancy and high-value personalised ads. For example, if a person just came out of the gym then show cold beverage ads. If a tourist just arrived here then show local tourist attraction ads.

Besides the role of selecting ads, DFP also is also a powerful reporting tool. Reporting helps AdOps managers to understand how well the ad selection process is performing and optimise it further.