The Lowdown on Adtech: Overview, Components, and Trends

If you use a phone or a laptop — or even scroll through a social app for a minute — you’ll run into ads. Most of the time, they blend into the feed, and we barely pay attention to them. But the fact that a particular ad shows up on your screen isn’t random. There’s a whole set of decisions happening in the background: which ad to show, why you’re seeing it, and who paid for that spot.

According to Statista Market Insights (updated in August 2025), global ad spending continues to grow and is expected to nearly double by 2030 compared to 2017: values on the chart rise from below 2,000 to well over 4,000. This means that more and more money flows through advertising systems every year, and the competition for user attention becomes increasingly intense. In such an environment, it’s no longer enough for businesses to simply “run ads” — they need to understand how advertising technologies work to avoid wasting budgets and truly strengthen their marketing.

In this article, we’ll break down what AdTech is in simple, human language, explore the structure of the advertising ecosystem, look at the key players involved, and go through the trends shaping the future of the industry. If you want to finally understand what happens behind every ad impression and how to use it to your advantage, you’re in the right place.

What is AdTech?

If you break it down, AdTech is the entire behind-the-scenes system that ensures you see online ads exactly when they’re most relevant to you. Many people assume that digital advertising is just banners and videos showing up on websites and in apps. But in reality, every ad on your screen gets there thanks to a bunch of systems and tools working behind the scenes.

Online advertising by itself is just a format — the fact that an ad appears somewhere. AdTech, on the other hand, consists of intelligent tools that determine where, to whom, when, and at what price an ad should be shown. These technologies make online advertising fast, automated, and measurable. They analyze user signals, manage bidding processes, distribute budgets, and help brands use their ad spend as efficiently as possible.

The rapid growth of digital advertising in recent years has turned AdTech into the core of the modern advertising industry. When billions of dollars move through digital auctions every day, it becomes impossible to control this massive ecosystem without advanced technologies.

Advertising Technology is often compared to Marketing Technology, but they serve different purposes.

Marketing Technology (MarTech) helps businesses interact with users after they’ve already shown interest — through email, content, CRM systems, and analytics.

Advertising Technology (AdTech) focuses specifically on paid advertising channels — how ads are purchased, delivered, and optimized.

Simply put: MarTech helps you communicate with your audience, while AdTech helps you find that audience at the right moment and deliver the right ad.

The AdTech Ecosystem: How It Works from Start to Finish

To understand how the AdTech ecosystem works, it helps to imagine that every online ad goes through a long journey — only this journey happens in less than a second. Everything starts with the advertiser. They set up the campaign, choose the audience, upload creatives, and send all of that to a Demand-Side Platform. The DSP analyzes the campaign settings, looks at competing bids, evaluates which users are likely to react to the ad, and gets ready to enter auctions.

Next in line is the ad exchange — essentially a marketplace where advertisers, through their DSPs, compete for available ad placements. On the publisher side, a Supply-Side Platform manages the inventory of websites, apps, and media platforms. The SSP puts available slots up for auction and tells the system what can be purchased at this exact moment.

When a user opens a website or an app, the SSP sends a bid request to the ad exchange. The DSP receives this signal, calculates the likelihood that this particular user will take the desired action, and submits a bid. The ad exchange compares all the bids, picks a winner, and passes control to the next stage. This entire chain — dozens of operations — takes only about 100–200 milliseconds.

Once the winning bid is chosen, the ad server takes over. It picks the creative, checks that everything fits the format, adjusts it for the user’s device, and makes sure the ad works properly on the page. The user just sees the ad appear — without realizing that a tiny auction happened right before it.

But the process doesn’t end with the impression. The DSP analyzes how the user interacted with the ad, the SSP tracks inventory performance, the publisher sends engagement metrics back into the system, and this data flows to the ad exchange as well. This constant cycle helps algorithms learn and improve future results.

In the end, the AdTech ecosystem works like the engine of digital advertising. It automatically determines which ad should be shown, to whom, at what moment, and at what price. Thanks to this system, the massive world of online advertising operates not chaotically, but as a coordinated sequence of fast decisions that connects advertisers and publishers into a single digital environment.

Key Players in Advertising Technologies

The commercial world has a bunch of players, each with its own important role in digital advertising. Here’s a quick look at who’s who:

Publishers

Publishers are the owners of digital spaces—websites, apps, or any platform where ads can be displayed. They sell ad space to advertisers and rely on ad software to maximize their revenue by optimizing how and when ads are shown.

Advertisers

Advertisers are the brands or businesses that want to sell their products or services. They buy ad space from publishers and use AdTech to reach their target audience, making sure they get the best return on their investment.

Agency Trade Desks/Advertising Agencies

Advertising agencies, also known as creative agencies, are specialized teams that manage programmatic ad buying on behalf of clients. They optimize ad campaigns and ensure they meet the client’s goals.

Ad Networks

Ad networks connect publishers with advertisers. They gather ad space from different publishers and sell it to advertisers, making sure the right ads get matched with the right spots.

AdTech Solution Providers

The major task of solution providers is AdTech software development. They create and offer the tools and platforms that power the entire AdTech industry, such as ad servers, DSPs, and SSPs. Providers must balance offering a variety of tools under one brand while clearly defining their market role.

End-Users

While not directly involved in the buying or selling of ads, consumers are an essential part of the AdTech ecosystem. Their behavioral patterns and preferences, as well as their level of privacy, all affect the development of ads, particularly with respect to targeted advertising and data management.

Core Components of the AdTech Ecosystem

The AdTech world is made up of a few key components that are crucial for delivering, managing, and improving digital ads. Let’s break down these essential elements:

Ad Servers

Ad servers are key tools for publishers, advertisers, ad networks, and agencies to manage and show ads. There are two kinds: first-party servers for publishers and third-party servers for everyone else. They make sure the right ads reach the right people at the right time.

Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs)

SSPs are used by publishers to connect to the programmatic advertising ecosystem. They enable publishers to sell their unsold ad inventory automatically, often through an integrated ad exchange.

SSPs offer features like price floors, ad zone control, and bidder selection, giving publishers significant control over their ad space.

Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs)

DSPs are like SSPs for advertisers. They automate ad buying, letting advertisers bid on ad space in real time. DSPs offer features like frequency capping, budget management, and audience targeting.

Data Management Platforms (DMPs)

DMPs traditionally collected and managed third-party data to create comprehensive user profiles for ad targeting.

However, with the impending demise of third-party cookies, many DMPs are pivoting toward first-party data strategies or rebranding as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

CDPs focus on collecting and managing first-party data directly from users interacting with a business’s digital properties.

As a response to privacy concerns and the shift away from third-party cookies, CDPs are becoming an essential part of the ad stack, allowing for accurate audience targeting without relying on external data sources.

Ad Inventory Scanning and Ad Quality Tools

These tools, also known as brand safety tools, help ensure that ads meet quality standards and do not contain malware or inappropriate content.

They protect the reputation of both publishers and advertisers by scanning ad content before it is displayed, ensuring a safe and positive user experience.

Types of AdTech Platforms: What Solutions Exist Today?

In day-to-day work, advertisers, agencies, and publishers rely on a much wider range of tools to launch campaigns, understand how they perform, boost revenue, and manage quality.

In this part, you’ll learn which types of AdTech platforms exist today, what each of them is designed for, and how they differ. This will give you a full picture of the market — not just its fundamental building blocks — and help you understand which tools may be most useful for your business.

Below are the most important types of AdTech shaping today’s digital advertising landscape.

Analytics & Attribution Platforms

These platforms help companies understand how their advertising actually performs and how each channel contributes to results. They reveal the user journey, compare attribution models, evaluate touchpoints, and show which tactics truly work. With this insight, brands can build strategies based on audience data rather than assumptions.

Ad Exchanges

An ad exchange is the core of automated media buying. This is where advertisers and publishers meet: DSPs place bids, SSPs provide available inventory, and the system selects the winning bid. Everything happens in real time. These platforms bring transparency, competition, and speed—key advantages of digital advertising.

Mobile AdTech Solutions

Since smartphones have become the primary screen for most people, mobile AdTech tools are evolving especially fast. These solutions help manage in-app campaigns, use geolocation, analyze user behavior inside apps, and adapt creatives specifically for the mobile experience.

CTV/OTT AdTech

The rise of Smart TV and streaming platforms has opened a new era of video advertising. CTV/OTT AdTech combines the reach of the “big screen” with the precision of digital technologies: targeting, frequency control, auctions, and advanced analytics. This is one of the fastest-growing segments of the AdTech ecosystem.

Video Ad Platforms

Video remains one of the most engaging and effective ad formats. Video ad platforms help brands place video creatives, optimize bids, measure engagement, and tailor content for different devices. They support pre-roll, mid-roll, short-form clips, and interactive formats—everything needed to deliver powerful visual messages.

Native Advertising Platforms

These platforms make it possible to integrate ads into content naturally. Recommendation widgets, article-based ads, product cards — native formats feel less intrusive and create higher engagement because they blend into the user’s flow.

Header Bidding Solutions

Header bidding allows publishers to increase their revenue by letting multiple DSPs compete simultaneously. For advertisers, this means access to premium inventory; for publishers, it provides higher CPM and more transparent monetization.

Fraud Detection Platforms

Ad fraud remains one of the biggest challenges in digital advertising. Fraud detection platforms analyze traffic, identify bots, block suspicious activity, and protect budgets from invalid impressions and clicks. These tools ensure that advertisers pay only for real interactions from real users.

Conclusion

Each type of platform represents a separate layer within the broader AdTech ecosystem. Together, they create a flexible technological toolkit that advertisers, agencies, and publishers can use to build accurate, scalable, and efficient advertising strategies.

If you want to understand which AdTech platforms are right for your business, this classification is the best place to start.

Current Trends

AdTech is changing fast, and staying updated on the latest trends can help you make the most of your digital advertising efforts.

A big change is the growing emphasis on privacy. With new regulations like GDPR and CCPA in place, companies are focusing on using first-party data and adopting privacy-friendly practices. This way, they can stay compliant while still delivering personalized ads.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are also making a huge impact. These technologies help advertisers get a better handle on their audience and fine-tune ad performance by analyzing data in real time.

Programmatic advertising is a top trend as well. This automated approach streamlines ad buying and selling, making it easier to target the right people at the right time without all the manual effort.

Native ads, which little by little blend in with the content around them, are becoming incredibly popular. They’re less noisy and more encouraging, making them a favorite for advertisers who want to connect with users.

Challenges in the AdTech Landscape and How to Overcome Them

As the AdTech landscape continues to grow more complex, advertisers, agencies, and publishers face a number of recurring challenges related to transparency, privacy changes, data quality, and rising media costs.

To help you quickly grasp what these challenges mean in practice — and what you can do to overcome them — we’ve summarized them in the table below.

Key Challenges in AdTech and How to Overcome Them

Conclusion

AdTech has become a central part of modern digital advertising. It’s no longer just a collection of separate tools, but a full-fledged technological ecosystem that defines how brands reach their audiences, how publishers monetize their content, and how agencies manage increasingly complex advertising processes. To succeed in this environment, it’s important to understand how the AdTech ecosystem works: who takes part in it, which platforms support each stage, how data moves across the system, and which trends are shaping the industry today.

The landscape is evolving rapidly. Privacy regulations are tightening, new formats are emerging, competition for user attention is growing, and automation, along with AI, is playing a bigger role than ever. In this environment, the companies that thrive are those that can quickly adapt, build a flexible tech stack, and rely on data-driven strategies rather than guesswork.

Whether you’re a publisher, advertiser, or agency, having a stable and well-designed AdTech stack is now essential for running effective campaigns, using your budget wisely, and achieving measurable business results.

If you’re looking to enhance your AdTech capabilities, streamline your processes, or build your own technological infrastructure, SCAND can help you move forward faster and more confidently. We develop custom software solutions, integrate platforms, create reliable data pipelines, and help companies operate effectively in a privacy-first world.

Ready to move to the next level? Contact SCAND and start building an AdTech stack that will support your business today and in the future.