Real-time Bidding Strategy in Display Advertising: An Empirical Analysis

As one of the most striking advances in online advertising, real-time bidding (RTB) [3] has received increasing attention since it improves the efficiency and transparency of the ad ecosystem [4]. In RTB, the publishing media sells ad impressions through public auctions, and advertisers bid on their targeting ad impressions in real-time and pay for their winning impressions. Therefore, it requires the bidding agent to make accurate user feedback predictions for each ad impression and determine a reasonable bidding price to maximize the long-term revenue [5] of the ad campaign. Figure 1 illustrates the entire process of an advertiser participating in bidding for an ad impression. Initially, the advertiser registers an ad campaign on the Demand Side Platform (DSP) and specifies the campaign's budget as well as targeting rules for each ad delivery period (usually a day). Bidding agents running on DSP participate in RTB on behalf of advertisers.