What is the Difference Between SSP & Ad Exchange?

February 22, 2017

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I wrote a post about RTB in my last post where I explained about RTB, DSP, SSP & Ad Exchange. You would like to have a look at the same.

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I would like to mention about probable difference b/w SSP vs AD Exchange.

What are the Difference b/w SSP Vs Ad Exchange?

S.NO.	SSP	AD Exchange
1.	SSP are aggregators of publishers which aggregates ad inventory from various publishers.	They are aggregators of SSPs. They may have direct publishers as well, however that is very unlikely.
2.	SSP provides tools to publishers.	Ad Exchanges don’t provide any such tools however just enable connecting SSP to DSPs
3.	SSP send bidding request to Ad exchanges.	Ad exchanges process bidding requests received from SSP & sends the response back to SSP as well as DSP.
4.	SSPs are connected to DSPs via Ad Exchange	Ad Exchanges are connected to both SSP as well as DSP so It works as a bridge between SSP & DSP
5.	SSP’s customers or clients are publishers	Ad exchanges customers are DSPs. DSP’s customers are media buyers or advertisers.
6.	SSPs are not private which means they don’t have such arrangement wherein they are not open to all.	There can be private exchanges as well which are used only by an advertiser or an agency.
7.	SSPs do provide services to their publishers. They have direct relationships with large publishers to manage their inventory.	Exchanges are automated technology platforms that facilitate transactions between SSP & DSP.
8.	SSPs typically have higher gross margins than exchanges because they are able to layer on services such as data management, prioritization fees, video, etc.	Ad exchanges comparatively have less margins.
9.	SSPs may have direct advertisers as well	Ad Exchanges only have advertisers from DSPs
10.	Examples of SSPs are Rubicon, Pubmatic, Admeld etc.	Examples of Ad Exchanges are AppNexus, Right Media, DoubleCLick AdX.

Conclusion

Although there are many differences however nowadays things have got merged so there is typically no difference between an SSP & Ad Exchange. SSPs come with ad exchanges built in.