There are two primary types of ad inventory. It’s important to know the difference.
Reserved inventory is purchased in advance for a set price; non-reserved inventory is bought at auction when it's available. To learn more, keep reading.
Reserved inventory
Ad space on a particular site, section or page that is put aside for a specific advertiser is known as reserved inventory. Buying display space in this manner is much like buying print space in a magazine. You pick the space you want, when you want it and how often – and you pay a premium for it up front.
Benefits of reserved inventory:
- Control. Buying on specific sites allows you to focus on specific experiences that make sense for your brand. For example, if you make dog collars and want to place ads where you think dog lovers will see them, you might buy space on a pet site.
- Planing. Most of the time, reserved inventory is bought directly from the site at a set rate, so you can plan around it.
Non reserved inventory
Not all ad space on sites is reserved for a particular advertiser. Non-reserved inventory is sold on an open marketplace, with all parties – publisher, advertiser, network, DSP, and so forth – attempting to get the greatest value from the available space. Non-reserved inventory today is available in two main blocks - networks and exchanges.
Benefits of non-reserved inventory:
- Scale. Non-reserved inventory can be bought across multiple sites, giving you significant scale and reach. Regardless of where your ad runs, you can feel confident you’ve reached your desired audience.
- Frequency. Internet users often disperse their attention over dozens or even hundreds of sites each day. They do not simply sit down at one site for 30 minutes at a stretch. Since a network works with so many sites, it allows you to serve sequential messages to a user across multiple sites until you get the results you want.