Site served vs. Third Party Served Ads: What is the difference?

In the online advertising world, it is very important to know how are the Ads served – site served or third party served (DART, Atlas etc). What is the difference really and why is it so important?

The difference is that when the ads are site served, it is not possible to the ad metrics like – impressions, clicks, post-click and post-impression activities. The metrics need to be provided by the publisher or the site serving the ad. There are some workarounds to the problem like using a click-command to get click and post-click activities via the third party ad server but being able to get impressions and post-impressions activities is not possible. Also, if the media buy is a CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) it is hard to get media spend, as it would be calculated based on the impressions. So, one of the drawbacks is NOT being able to easily get metrics.

The advantage of site serving is that the page load times are usually faster. Since, one layer of communication – site with the Ad server is removed.

The advantage of using third party ad servers like DART and Atlas is that the daily reporting is seamless. The reports for the previous day can be pulled the next day using the easy to use interface.

Most of the advertisers are now moving to third party ad serving solutions, so that the reporting is seamless and also being able to get post-impressions activities is a big advantage.