Plain-English guides to programmatic advertising — how the auctions work, how machine learning buys smarter, and how to read the numbers that matter. No jargon left unexplained.
New to programmatic? Start with the guided path →
BasicsIf you've ever wondered how the ad on a website got there, start here. We explain what a DSP does, how it fits into the ad-buying world, and why it matters for your budget.
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MeasurementYou buy ten thousand ads and the report says fewer. The five questions an impression must answer, the published standard for each, and why we keep two records of every ad.
EngineeringSame-region traffic to S3 is free — unless it passes through a NAT gateway. What we moved, why, when it's worth doing, and the checks to run first.
EngineeringThe whole platform is code, one definition serves every environment, and most of our best fixes were a measurement rather than a purchase.
ProductGoogle campaigns — YouTube feeds, Search and skippable in-stream — planned, launched and reported on from the dashboard you already use.
EngineeringA load test gates every merge. Reading the report properly showed it was measuring our rate limiter, not our bidder — plus what the platform actually handles.
EngineeringOur retry delay was supposed to be random. It returned the same number 100,000 times — and the test we wrote for it passed.
AIAds are inside AI assistants now, and agents have started completing purchases. What it means for brands — and why Asia may feel it first.
EngineeringOur stack, system design, security posture and scaling approach — shared openly, with a diagram and honest numbers.
TargetingThe methods (NLP, embeddings, sentiment, multimodal), what the public research says, and the philosophy behind our approach — no cookies needed.
ChannelsGoogle's image-and-video channel for the top of the funnel — and how AdZoic runs it alongside real-time bidding.
BasicsReal-time bidding, step by step — from a page opening to the winning ad appearing, faster than you can blink.
TargetingTwo ways to reach the right people, no third-party cookies required. Here's how they differ and how to combine them.
AIA look under the hood at predictive bidding: how models forecast value and auto-optimise your spend in real time.
MeasurementDecode the dashboard. What each number means, what "good" looks like, and which ones to watch.
Brand safetyHow pre-bid filtering blocks ad fraud and unsafe content before a cent of your budget is spent.
DataAs third-party cookies fade, the data you own becomes your edge. Here's how to put it to work.
The fastest way to understand programmatic is to watch it run on your own goals.