Agency trading desk (ATD) is either software or a set of services that connects advertisers and publishers. It helps advertisers to plan ad campaigns, reach publishers, and optimize the campaigns.
So advertisers connect with an ATD, the ATD, on behalf of the advertiser, connects to demand-side platforms and creates ad campaigns. Therefore, an advertiser pays both to the ATD and the publisher.
Some ATDs offer additional services such as consultation in ad campaigns planning, execution, monitoring, and optimization. Therefore, they involve human expertise in the process.
However, ATDs are not used a lot nowadays. It has numerous reasons, for example:
- ATDs charged too much extra for their work
- the advertiser had little influence on where they get published and how
- ATDs used the lack of knowledge about digital advertising and offered their expertise which is now fully available
- ATDs were not transparent about their working process and could deliver inaccurate analytics about ad campaign success
- in-house demand-service platforms became cheaper
