Introductory Books for Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising industry is daunting for new comers with lots of terminologies, concepts and ideas. There are also tons of players in the advertising eco-system. Where and how to get started? Here are some books that you may find useful.

Two nice little books by Dominik Kororin:

Introduction to Programmatic Advertising (2nd) — June 2022

This highly recommended book covers every aspects of programmatic advertising. It is easy to understand and many technical details are well explained. This 2nd version contains new updates because ad industry has been evolving so quickly.

Data in Digital Advertising — March 2018

This book focuses mostly on the data aspects of the programmatic advertising. Data is one of the most critical piece in the ad industry. There is a detailed coverage of DMP (Data Management Platform). I wish the book could cover more technical aspects of how to build a data platform.

One longer book by Gregory Cristal:

Ad Serving Technology — Jan 2014

This book is a bit outdated since it was published almost 10 years ago. I wish the author could publish a new edition. But it covers a lot of fundamental technical details and technologies to build the ad system. This book was so popular in my team that in fact it was not yet returned from someone who borrowed it from me.