Ad Exchange
Open marketplace connecting SSPs and DSPs.
"The stock exchange — neutral venue where supply meets demand at millisecond speed."
Where Ad Exchange sits
Reshuffle for more — each fact links to its source.
Google AdX evolved out of DoubleClick Advertising Exchange, which itself came from the 2007 Right Media acquisition by Yahoo (sort of — Yahoo got Right Media; Google built its own).
Index Exchange handles peak loads above 1.5 million queries per second — roughly the throughput of YouTube's entire search index.
The US v. Google ad-tech case (2023) hinged largely on whether AdX, GAM and DV360 being inside one company is anticompetitive.
- · Bid requests from SSPs
- · Bids to DSPs, winners back upstream
Some platforms blur SSP and Exchange (Google AdX). The exchange handles ID resolution, consent forwarding, and routes the bid request to relevant DSPs based on filters.