• New York Times, Friday, March 12, 2010 1:52 PM

The New York Times takes a close look at real-time bidding, which lets advertisers examine site visitors, and then bid to serve them ads in near-real time. "The biggest problem with advertising was that decisions about what ads to show were made way in advance of when they actually appear," Brian O'Kelley, head of real-time bidding tech provider AppNexus tells The Times.

"There are a lot of reasons you want to make those decisions as close to when the ads run as possible." Real-time technology has actually been around for a few years, but has only recently taken off. Helping matters, DoubleClick's latest Ad Exchange offering supports real-time bidding. Yahoo, meanwhile, is presently testing the process on its Right Media Exchange, while Microsoft is doing the same on its AdECN exchange, according to The Times.

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