Real-Time Bidding

Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is an automated auction system in which advertisers bid in real time for advertising space when a website visitor loads a page. The highest bidder wins the auction and their advert is displayed immediately, all within approximately 100 milliseconds. For Dutch SMEs, this means you only pay for ad space that actually matches your target audience, at the exact moment someone is searching for your product or service.

How Real-Time Bidding works in practice

As soon as a visitor opens a website, the site sends a bid request to an ad exchange. This ad exchange collects information about the visitor: which page they are viewing, their previous browsing behaviour, and which device they are using. Within milliseconds, advertisers receive this profile and decide whether they wish to bid. You set in advance the maximum you are willing to pay for a click from, say, a 35-year-old entrepreneur from Utrecht who has recently searched for CRM software. The ad server compares all bids and displays the winning advert even before the page has fully loaded. This entire process is fully automated via API connections between different platforms.

From traditional banner sales to programmatic buying

Until the mid-2000s, advertisers purchased banner space through direct deals with websites. You paid per thousand impressions, regardless of whether the right person saw your advert. RTB emerged when Google and others realised this was inefficient. By enabling bidding per impression and utilising visitor data, advertisers were able to allocate their budgets in a much more targeted way. A large proportion of online display advertising now takes place via RTB systems. This is relevant for small and medium-sized companies because you no longer need to set aside large budgets for broad campaigns, but can target precisely the customer you are looking for.

What Real-Time Bidding delivers for your company

With RTB, you only pay for advertising space that actually delivers value for your company. For example, a sports nutrition online shop can bid on visitors who have recently viewed fitness products, whilst a B2B software supplier can target IT managers at companies with 20 to 100 employees. You set your own maximum cost-per-click, and the system automatically optimises which impressions generate the most conversions. This makes RTB part of a broader online marketing strategy in which you align your advertising budget, SEO and content marketing. At Monkey Vision , we’ve found that small and medium-sized companies which combine RTB with strong organic visibility reduce their advertising costs by an average of 30 to 40 per cent, as they need to compensate less for weak SEO rankings.

Real-Time Bidding can be used for virtually any online advertising objective, but the added value depends heavily on how specifically you can define your target audience. The more precisely you know who you want to reach and when, the more effective RTB becomes. Below are four specific scenarios in which Dutch companies are successfully using RTB.

Retargeting website visitors who do not convert

A common application is retargeting: following up with targeted adverts on other websites for visitors who viewed your product page but did not make a purchase. For example, suppose someone views a quote page for business insurance but closes their browser. Via RTB, you can display an advert on a news site they visit within an hour, featuring a reminder or an extra incentive such as a free risk analysis. You only pay for that specific impression, not for thousands of untargeted banners. This works particularly well for services with a longer decision-making process, such as B2B software, financial products or home renovations. Please note: retargeting requires proper GDPR consent via your cookie banner; otherwise, you are not permitted to use behavioural data.

Building lookalike audiences from existing customers

If you have a customer base with good conversion rates, you can create lookalike audiences via RTB platforms such as the Google Display Network or The Trade Desk. The system analyses the characteristics of your best customers and identifies visitors with similar profiles: the same age, interests, browsing behaviour or purchase history. An online shop selling baby products can, for example, target parents of children aged between 0 and 2 who have recently purchased maternity products. You don’t have to guess which websites or demographics work best; the algorithm optimises this automatically. This approach combines well with marketing automation, allowing you to run adverts and email campaigns in sync.

Geographically targeted campaigns for local service providers

RTB allows you to bid on visitors within a specific radius of your premises. A plumber in London can show adverts to anyone within 15 kilometres searching for ‘emergency plumber’ or ‘leak repair’. You don’t pay for clicks from Amsterdam or Maastricht, only for relevant local visitors. This also works for events: during a local festival, a restaurant can show adverts to visitors who are in the area at that moment, based on their GPS location. For local small and medium-sized companies, this is often more effective than broad Google Ads campaigns, as you waste less of your budget on irrelevant clicks.

When is Real-Time Bidding the right choice, and when is it not?

RTB works best if you have a clear customer profile and a sufficient budget for testing and optimisation. Allow for at least 500 to 1,000 pounds per month to gather enough data for reliable optimisation. If you operate in a very niche market with fewer than a thousand potential customers in the United Kingdom, the target audience is often too small for RTB platforms. In that case, direct LinkedIn campaigns or account-based marketing are more effective. Retargeting is also less useful if your product involves impulse purchases without repeat business, such as wedding photography. RTB delivers the most value for products or services with a decision-making process lasting several days to weeks, where you can engage with visitors multiple times before they convert.