What the ad tech industry really needs right now is a new three-letter acronym.
Well, no. What the industry needs is open-source code to improve real-time bidding and optimize traffic. It just so happens to come in the form of a handy TLA: DTE, short for Dynamic Traffic Engine.
On Wednesday, the IAB Tech Lab announced that Amazon Ads is donating its DTE, which will allow open-source access to the tool as the Tech Lab develops it further.
The tool was launched in 2024 to help SSPs send more relevant supply to buyers and optimize bid requests, ultimately providing advertisers with better performing ad formats and placements. The goal is to improve the data signals from the DSP’s side, like conveying the ad refresh rate or the total number of ad units on a page (a practice called traffic shaping).
Now the tool can be used to reduce infrastructure costs across the industry by improving efficiency and reducing wasted bids.
Open-source sesame!
Sounds like the dream. But … how does it work?
As an open-source tool, the DTE will serve as a “smart traffic filter,” IAB Tech Lab CEO Tony Katsur told AdExchanger.
DSPs can convey their preferences to SSPs in real time by publishing signals via the open-source code, he said. From there, SSPs can analyze the signals to see what types of bids are most popular and adjust their offerings accordingly.
In some ways, the DTE has a lot in common with curation: Both are systems for SSPs to provide more relevant and performant inventory to DSPs. It’s sort of like “macro-level curation,” said Katsur. But, he added, while curation deals generally apply to a specific brand, product or campaign, DTE focuses on trends across a DSP’s entire client base.
On cloud nine
The DTE is made up of three components: the cloud infrastructure, the evaluator library and a filtering solution.
The cloud effectively functions as a “rules engine” on the buy side, Katsur said. It defines inventory that the SSP should include or exclude to attract bids. Buyers store traffic rules in the cloud, where they can specify certain ad formats to prioritize, like banner size or ad position, or something as particular as CTV from a specific region.
The cloud is “highly configurable,” said Katsur, so buyers can specify not only what type of inventory they’re interested in, but details like what time of day to prioritize certain formats over others.
On the flip side, Katsur said, the evaluator library is “like a brain” for the sell side that reads the cloud signals.
Once the seller has received the recommendations from the cloud, it shapes traffic per the DSP’s requests and determines whether to forward or filter each impression.
The DTE also includes support for programmatic deals, meaning that specific deal IDs can be excluded from the cloud-based rules set by the DSP in its DTE. For instance, Katsur said, a DSP might want less of a specific type of inventory overall, but it might be particularly beneficial for an existing deal.
The DSP could add the deal ID to an exclusion list so it would continue receiving the same traffic while the open marketplace would receive less of that specific type of bid.
It’s an ongoing loop: Once the DSP sees which inventory performs best, it signals that to the cloud. Then the publisher side of the DTE sees the updated request in the evaluator library and filters its inventory accordingly. Rinse and repeat.
Win-win
The DTE brings obvious benefits for advertisers, who fine-tune their incoming inventory and save on infrastructure costs. Publishers learn what type of inventory is most desirable and, if they can meet those requirements, they stand to benefit from potentially higher bids.
Plus, there’s an eco-benefit.
By preventing “billions of unnecessary bid requests from being sent across the internet,” Katsur said, there’s less wasted carbon and electricity.
Sure, DSPs already can address unnecessary bid requests by throttling supply and asking an SSP to send fewer queries per second. But in doing so, they face one of two problems, Katsur said: They either risk giving up high-quality supply or they spend valuable time clarifying their preferences over email or phone call.
DTE allows sellers to filter out queries in real time, he said, without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
