Ad Network

Ad networks have changed over the past few years. In some cases, almost beyond recognition.

In the past, ad networks were pretty simple: they aggregated ad inventory from apps and websites and matched that inventory with buyers looking to purchase ads. But now you have supply side platforms (SSPs) and demand side platforms (DSPs), ad exchanges, which allow open bidding on ad inventory, and what’s called retail media, which is non-traditional platforms offering ad inventory on their own sites and apps.

An example is Uber, which features ads from retailers like CVS, streaming platforms like Spotify, and offers on Burger King.

Meta, the former Facebook, and Google control a huge percentage of digital ad inventory, but many other ad networks exist as well. One relatively new and fast-growing platform for advertising is CTV, or connected TV.

As BigCommerce writes about the importance of ad networks:

The growth of advertising networks, and the wealth of user data that has come with it, presents tremendous opportunities for marketers who want to expand their reach with consumers. Whether your goals are to build awareness or generate conversions, an advertising network can help you find your audience and get results.

If you want to learn more about how the performance of ad networks compare to each other, check out our Singular ROI Index for 2024, which identifies the top media sources globally for return on investment, retention, and fraud.

And retail media is quickly becoming a huge part of advertising.

As eMarketer says:

“Retail media is one of the hottest trends in advertising. Retailers are taking ownership of their advertising by creating retail media networks, and spend is exploding. Retailers are building out their digital presences, boosting in-store offerings, experimenting with streaming and media partnerships, and putting ads everywhere they can.”

Singular works for advertisers to improve their marketing analytics, attribution, reporting, and ad monetization. To do that, Singular connects to all the major ad networks to unify your marketing data and provide the following solutions:

• Marketing analytics: Singular’s marketing analytics platform allows you to take a scientific approach to growth by identifying campaign optimization opportunities with granular performance insights.
• Cost aggregation: By aggregating costs across ad networks, Singular provides advertisers with unified marketing data that is ready for analysis. Specifically, the cost aggregator collects, transforms, and analyzes data to provide a real-time view of expenses across all channels.
• Ad monetization: Ad monetization analytics allows app businesses to reveal insights and opportunities that can lead to increased profits through collecting, normalizing, and aggregating ad revenue across monetization partners.
• Mobile attribution: Finally, mobile attribution allows advertisers to accurately measure and analyze the impact of their marketing efforts across the entire customer lifecycle. By analyzing every ad dollar spent across ad networks, this allows marketers to get a complete view of their ROI and campaign performance.
• Fraud prevention: Whenever using ad networks there exists the possibility of encountering ad fraud. To solve this, Singular’s fraud prevention uses the latest cybersecurity techniques to block fraudulent activity and ensure that ad budgets are focused on high-quality users.
• PC and console attribution: Singular helps you launch higher LTV titles with cross-platform measurement and ROI insights from users across PC, console, web, and mobile.
• CTV attribution: Singular helps you unlock the value and power of smart and connected TV in your omnichannel marketing with a performance-driven approach to CTV and OTT acquisition.

In short, Singular works with ad networks of all kinds on all platforms in order to provide advertisers with accurate and up-to-date insights on their monetization and marketing efforts.

By aggregating data across all your growth sources into a single platform, this gives marketers a holistic view of how each channel is contributing to their bottom line.