• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 7, 2010

PubMatic announced the results Thursday of what it calls the first collaborative real-time bidding case study that compares RTB performance to other types of digital advertising methods across multiple advertiser channels. The study links performance of Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) MediaMath, [x+1], Turn, and DataXu, which access premium publisher inventory through PubMatic's sell-side platform.

RTB ad platforms allows companies to auction off ads for specific spaces on publisher Web sites before the ad serves up on the page. And it's all done in milliseconds.

The study, Ad Revenue Report 2010, tracks RTB versus non-RTB performance for each advertising campaign and similarities across multiple advertising verticals. It also aimed to track the increase in publisher ad revenue (eCPM) from both types of bidding performance metrics.

During the same 30-day period in August and September 2010, each DSP tracked performance of its advertising campaigns by three types of audience targeting methods: non-RTB, run of network; non-RTB, audience targeting; and RTB, impression-level optimization. Each DSP focused on a specific advertising vertical for this study: Automotive DataXu; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), MediaMath; Finance, [x+1]; and Telecom, Turn.

The findings from the study point to significantly higher CPMs from RTB campaigns in comparison to non-RTB campaigns, across all advertising verticals, by an average of 64%. RTB outperformed the non-RTB (RON) media buying methods across all four advertising verticals by an average of 749%.

Non-RTB campaigns that were audience targeted outperformed Non-RTB campaigns that were not audience targeted by an average of 324%. And based on cost-per-success metric as outlined by the advertisers for each campaign, RTB provided better ROI than non-RTB audience targeted campaigns by 101% on average.

Although many individual case studies highlight the benefits of RTB, this one marks the first time that multiple online advertising companies worked together to demonstrate that RTB has significant benefits for both publishers and advertisers.

It is interesting to note that during this study, RTB consistently outperformed, and provided greater ROI to the advertisers, than other types of media-buying methods for all participants. RTB, according to the study, enabled the advertiser for the first time to reach the correct audience, in the correct context, at the correct time, and for the correct price.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this ability to precisely target an audience allows the advertiser to pay more for ad inventory because of the improved return on investment.