TL;DR:
A demand side platform (DSP) is software that buys digital ads for you. It bids on single ad slots in real time. Those slots sit on websites, apps, and streaming services. You pick the audience, the budget, and the rules. The DSP does the bidding, the pacing, and the reporting.
Here are the 9 best demand side platforms:
- SMARTe: best for the account and contact data your DSP aims at. Free trial, then $25 per user a month.
- The Trade Desk: best for big budgets across many channels and CTV. Around $100K a quarter.
- Google Display and Video 360: the only DSP that sells YouTube ads. Around $25K a month.
- Amazon DSP: best for shopper data and Amazon-owned ad space. Self-serve, no minimum.
- StackAdapt: best for mid-market teams running native ads and CTV. Around $5K a month.
- Basis: best for agencies that want planning, buying, and billing in one place. Custom quote.
- Demandbase One: best for large ABM programmes with ads built in. Custom quote.
- AdRoll ABM: best for account targeting on a smaller budget. Custom quote.
- Viant: best for people-based targeting without a trading desk. Custom quote.
Three things to know before you pick one:
- DSP fees run 15% to 20% of your media spend. The real total often passes 30% once you add data and measurement costs.
- B2B display click-through rates sit between 0.04% and 0.10%. Clicks are the wrong way to judge these ads.
- A match rate under 60% to 70% is a red flag. It means someone built your list from email domains, not verified records.
A demand side platform buys your digital ads for you. The auctions finish faster than you can blink. Picking one feels like the big decision. It rarely is. About $26.8 billion of US programmatic spend is wasted every year. Less than half of every dollar reaches a real person.
I have watched B2B teams rip out a DSP that worked fine. The real problem sat upstream, in an account list nobody had checked. Start with the job the software does.
What a Demand Side Platform Actually Does
A demand side platform sits on the buy side of the ad market. You load an audience. You set a budget. The platform then bids on single ad impressions across websites, apps, and streaming services.
You stop buying placements. You start buying people, one impression at a time.
The Auction, Explained Simply
The sequence runs like this:
- Someone opens a web page or a streaming app.
- The publisher puts that ad slot up for auction.
- Your DSP sees the bid request and checks it against your rules.
- It decides whether to bid, and how much.
- The highest bid wins, and the ad loads.
All of it takes 100 to 200 milliseconds. The Trade Desk says its platform weighs more than 15 million ad chances per second.
DSP vs SSP vs Ad Exchange
Three pieces. Three jobs.
- DSP (demand side platform): works for the advertiser. It buys ad space.
- SSP (supply side platform): works for the publisher. It sells ad space.
- Ad exchange: the market where the two meet.
That is the whole model. Everything else is a feature bolted on top.
The definition matters when a vendor calls itself a DSP. To join G2's demand side platform category, a tool has to do three things. Bid in real time through exchanges or SSPs. Support impression-level bidding. Buy across more than one channel.
If a tool does not bid in auctions, it is not a DSP. It can still be vital to your programme, which I will come back to.
Where Your Money Actually Goes
This part rarely makes the listicles. It should.
DSPs take a cut of your media spend. The Trade Desk disclosed a 20.3% take rate in its 2024 filings. Agencies have reported effective fees past 30% once data and measurement costs pile on. SSPs take their own cut on the other side.
The ANA puts annual programmatic waste at $26.8 billion, up 34% in two years. Transaction costs eat close to 30% of budgets. Weak media productivity takes another 26%.
What to do: Get three numbers in writing before you sign. Platform fee as a share of spend. Data fees. Measurement and verification fees. A rep who will not put all three on paper has told you something.
The 9 Best Demand Side Platforms and DSP Data Providers
A quick word on this list, because mixed lists annoy me when nobody explains them.
Most entries below are DSPs. Some are ABM platforms with ad buying built in. The first entry is neither. It is the data layer that decides whether the rest of them hit anything.
1. SMARTe
Let me be straight, since I work here. SMARTe does not buy media. It is not a DSP and it does not bid in auctions.
It is a global B2B data and signals platform, and it sits one step before the DSP in your workflow. That step is where most B2B programmatic campaigns quietly fall apart.
Every platform below aims at whatever list you hand it. SMARTe is how that list gets built, scored, and kept clean across 200+ countries.
SMARTe Key Features
- 289M+ verified B2B contacts and 66M+ company profiles across 200+ countries
- 75%+ direct dial and mobile coverage in the US, around 50% worldwide
- Technographic filters across 64K+ tracked technology products
- Bombora intent signals included, with no second vendor contract
- Growth signals, funding events, leadership moves, and job-change alerts
- Discover, Enrich, and Signals APIs for pushing audiences into your CRM, CDP, or ad stack
- AI agents that map buying groups per account and run account research
- Native Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, and Clay integrations
- Native MCP support, so tools like Claude and ChatGPT can pull live data
- SOC 2 Type II, GDPR aligned, CCPA compliant
What I Like About SMARTe
- Records get checked at the moment of delivery, not in a stale quarterly batch
- Coverage is truly global, with LATAM and APAC depth where US-first vendors thin out fast
- Intent, technographics, and contact data live in one platform, not three contracts
- Pricing runs on credits with no per-seat fee on Pro, so a whole team can share
- The APIs make audience refresh automatic, which matters when your list shifts monthly
- Compliance is strong enough for EU and UK campaigns without a legal review each time
- A free plan lets you test coverage on your own ICP before you spend a rupee or a dollar
Where SMARTe Falls Short
- No media buying, no bidding, no ad inventory. You still need a DSP beside it.
- Only 24 G2 reviews, so there is less peer research than for the biggest B2B contact database names
- Enterprise pricing sits behind a call, not a public rate card
- Credits burn fast once you wire the Enrich API into automated flows, so watch usage
SMARTe Pricing
- Free: $0. One user, 10 credits a month, no card needed.
- Pro: from $25 a month. Up to five users, up to 1,000 credits a month.
- Enterprise: custom. Unlimited users, custom credits, CRM export, SSO, dedicated support. Credit price is capped at $0.30 on a two-year term and drops with volume.
What Users Say About SMARTe
SMARTe holds 4.6 out of 5 on G2 across 24 reviews. Mid-market teams make up the largest share.
The day-to-day scores are the strong ones. Ease of use sits at 9.4. Ease of setup, 9.4. Ease of admin, 9.5. Quality of support, 9.2.
It scores 9.7 on being a good partner to do business with. That is the highest number on the profile.
Reviewers keep returning to two things: contact accuracy and the mobile numbers. Several say they got hours back each week that used to go into manual research. Teams selling into Europe bring up GDPR often.
The main knock is awareness, not the product. SMARTe is less known than the giants, so the community around it is smaller.
Best fit: B2B teams who want the target list, intent scoring, and contact data sorted before a single impression gets bought. Building your first enterprise ABM account list? Start here, not in the DSP.
2. The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is the default independent DSP. It owns no media, so it has no reason to steer your spend toward its own stock. That independence is the whole pitch, and it is a good one.
It reportedly handles around 63% of programmatic CTV buying and posted $2.9 billion in FY2025 revenue.
The Trade Desk Key Features
- Display, video, CTV, native, audio, mobile, and DOOH inventory
- Kokai, its AI bidding and forecasting layer
- Unified ID 2.0 for targeting without cookies
- A large third-party data marketplace
- Supply path optimization and clear placement reports
- Frequency caps, brand safety, and fraud checks
What I Like About The Trade Desk
- Reporting detail is the best in the category
- No walled-garden conflict, since it sells nobody's inventory
- Deep data partnerships for layering firmographic and intent segments
- Free training, which cuts the cost of getting a new buyer up to speed
Where The Trade Desk Falls Short
- The spend floor shuts out most mid-market advertisers
- It assumes a trained buyer. A generalist marketer will struggle.
- Fees are high, and agencies report the real total climbing past 30%
- Kokai's automation removed some manual control that veteran traders liked
The Trade Desk Pricing
Fees are negotiated, with nothing published. Platform charges land around 15% to 20% of media spend. Minimums start near $100,000 a quarter, and agency accounts report $150,000 a month. Discounts of 1% to 2% open up past $500,000 in spend.
What Users Say About The Trade Desk
The platform scores 4.4 out of 5 on G2 across 148 reviews, mostly from mid-market teams.
Praise centres on data transparency and the newer Kokai interface. Complaints centre on the learning curve and unclear fees.
Put side by side with StackAdapt, G2 reviewers call The Trade Desk more powerful but clearly harder to use.
3. Google Display & Video 360
DV360 is the walled-garden option. You get YouTube, the Google Display Network, and tight links to GA4 and Campaign Manager 360.
Nobody else sells YouTube inventory programmatically. That single fact keeps DV360 on most shortlists.
DV360 Key Features
- Exclusive YouTube and Google-owned inventory
- Audience building straight from GA4 site behaviour and conversions
- Programmatic guaranteed deals alongside open auction buying
- Dynamic creative optimization
- Brand safety and viewability checks built in
- Netflix exchange inventory for selected buyers
What I Like About DV360
- One workflow covers planning, buying, and reporting across Google
- Building audiences off GA4 is fast
- Reach is the largest of any single platform
Where DV360 Falls Short
- Google sits on both sides of the auction, which is an obvious conflict
- The interface is dense and unforgiving
- Campaign Manager 360 costs rise with impressions, adding $35,000 to $45,000 a year at scale
- Less freedom than independent DSPs over supply paths
DV360 Pricing
Fees are bundled and negotiated. In practice you want $25,000 to $50,000 a month in spend before the setup earns its keep.
What Users Say About DV360
Google Marketing Platform scores 4.1 out of 5 on G2 across roughly 299 reviews.
Reviewers rate inventory breadth and YouTube access highly. The steady complaints are interface complexity, the spend threshold, and stiffness next to independent platforms.
4. Amazon DSP
Amazon DSP runs on logged-in purchase data. That kind of certainty is rare and valuable.
For B2B software, it is mostly beside the point. I would rather say that than pad the section.
Amazon DSP Key Features
- Amazon first-party browsing and purchase signals
- Inventory across Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch, and IMDb
- Third-party publisher reach beyond Amazon sites
- Amazon Marketing Cloud for measurement
- Self-serve and managed service tiers
What I Like About Amazon DSP
- Known, logged-in identity beats modelled guesswork
- Strong CTV reach through Fire TV and Prime Video
- The self-serve tier dropped its formal floor, which opened the door to smaller budgets
Where Amazon DSP Falls Short
- Amazon's shopper data does almost nothing for a B2B software buyer
- The interface trails The Trade Desk and StackAdapt on polish
- Reporting weakens once you look at inventory outside Amazon
- Managed service floors are steep
Amazon DSP Pricing
Self-serve carries no formal minimum. Managed service needs $35,000 to $50,000 a month in media spend, before management fees.
What Users Say About Amazon DSP
It scores 4.2 out of 5 on G2, but from only 18 reviews. Treat that as a hint, not a verdict.
Reviewers value the audience data. The scores for ease of use (7.4) and meeting requirements (7.8) sit below The Trade Desk on every measure G2 tracks.
5. StackAdapt
StackAdapt is the fastest-growing DSP in the mid-market, and the reason is simple. You do not need a specialist trader to run it.
StackAdapt Key Features
- Native, display, video, CTV, audio, in-game, DOOH, and email in one seat
- AI-driven bid tuning and audience discovery
- Contextual targeting that does not lean on cookies
- Account-based targeting for B2B campaigns
- Dynamic creative optimization
- Ready-made audience segments
What I Like About StackAdapt
- Best native advertising in this list, which counts because native CTR runs several times higher than plain display
- Support quality is the thing reviewers mention most
- Contextual strength keeps it steady as identity signals fade
- A generalist can learn it in days, not months
Where StackAdapt Falls Short
- Reporting works, but it is shallower than DV360 or The Trade Desk
- The data marketplace is smaller
- Premium PMP and CTV depth runs out once you pass roughly $50,000 a month
- Platform fees are not published, so the real cost may surprise you at invoice time
StackAdapt Pricing
StackAdapt keeps its fees private. In practice the platform works properly from around $5,000 a month.
What Users Say About StackAdapt
StackAdapt earns 4.7 out of 5 on G2 from 853 reviews. That is the highest score and the biggest sample here, with 62.7% of reviewers from small businesses.
Reviewers credit the interface and the support team again and again. Reporting limits draw the most criticism.
6. Basis
Basis, formerly Centro, is as much a workflow tool as a DSP. It handles insertion orders, billing, and client reports next to the ad buying.
It has held the top spot in G2's DSP category every quarter since 2017.
Basis Key Features
- Programmatic, search, social, and direct publisher buys in one place
- 100+ private marketplace deals
- Insertion order handling and billing reconciliation
- Client-ready reporting
- Omnichannel inventory access
What I Like About Basis
- The workflow side removes a real operational headache for agencies
- Support scores 9.5 on G2, among the highest anywhere in this category
- Open to independent shops without enterprise-size minimums
Where Basis Falls Short
- CTV inventory is thinner than The Trade Desk
- Reporting detail lags DV360
- Some reviewers call the interface dated
- As a pure buying tool, it is less advanced than the enterprise DSPs
Basis Pricing
Quoted case by case. Basis publishes no rate card.
What Users Say About Basis
Basis sits at 4.5 out of 5 on G2 from 286 reviews, with 63% from small businesses.
Ease of use, support quality, and ease of doing business all score above the category average. Reporting depth is the steady critique.
7. Demandbase One
Demandbase blends account intelligence, engagement tracking, and advertising. It sits near the top of most ABM software shortlists.
Its B2B DSP leans on IP-to-account mapping rather than consumer identity graphs. For B2B, that is the right architecture.
Demandbase One Key Features
- Account identification mapped across billions of IP addresses
- Targeting that shifts creative by account stage
- Display, video, and social activation
- Buying committee identification
- Reporting that ties ad exposure to pipeline
- LiveRamp integration for cookieless identity
What I Like About Demandbase One
- Built for accounts and buying groups, not single cookies
- Website visitor identification feeds targeting directly
- Reporting speaks the language of a CRO, not a media buyer
Where Demandbase One Falls Short
- Pricing puts it out of reach for most mid-market teams
- Steep learning curve for non-technical users
- You are buying a platform, not a best-in-class DSP
- Inventory reach is narrower than a general-purpose DSP
Demandbase One Pricing
Enterprise tier only, priced on a call. Expect a six-figure annual commitment.
What Users Say About Demandbase One
Demandbase One holds 4.4 out of 5 on G2 across 1,938 reviews, the largest sample in this list.
Reviewers point to site visit intelligence and real-time alerts that pull sales and marketing together. Cost and complexity are the recurring objections.
8. AdRoll ABM
Formerly RollWorks, AdRoll ABM is an ABM platform with ad buying attached. Targeting works on accounts and contacts rather than cookies.
AdRoll ABM Key Features
- Account and contact targeting from CRM and intent data
- Display, social, and email in one workflow
- Two-way Salesforce sync
- Account-level engagement reporting
- Website visitor identification and retargeting
- Frequency and budget pacing built for ABM
What I Like About AdRoll ABM
- A lower barrier to entry than Demandbase
- Sales and marketing look at the same account view
- Messaging stays coordinated across channels without stitching tools together
Where AdRoll ABM Falls Short
- Reach is limited next to a general-purpose DSP
- Display inventory quality varies
- Reporting is account-first, which frustrates buyers who want placement detail
- Little use if you are not working from a defined account list
AdRoll ABM Pricing
Priced on request, and usually lower than Demandbase for a comparable account list.
What Users Say About AdRoll ABM
The current G2 profile carries no combined rating, so there is no headline number to quote.
Reviewers generally value the CRM connection and the account-level reporting. They note that inventory and creative flexibility trail dedicated DSPs.
9. Viant
Viant runs on a household and people-based identity graph instead of cookies. Setup is quick, which suits teams without deep programmatic staffing.
Viant Key Features
- People-based identity resolution
- CTV, display, streaming audio, and DOOH
- Campaign KPI summaries in one view
- Household-level targeting and measurement
What I Like About Viant
- Implementation is genuinely quick
- G2 reviewers rate support at 9.0, above Amazon DSP
- The identity approach holds up as cookies decay
Where Viant Falls Short
- Navigation frustrates some users
- Smaller inventory footprint than the top three
- Identity is consumer-oriented, so B2B fit rests heavily on your own account data
- Ease of use trails Demandbase and StackAdapt
Viant Pricing
Negotiated per account. No published tiers.
What Users Say About Viant
Viant scores 4.1 out of 5 on G2 from 297 reviews.
Reviewers call out the quick setup and the campaign summary view. Navigation and interface polish draw most of the criticism.
Other DSPs Worth Knowing
Four more names that surface in shortlists:
- Yahoo DSP for omnichannel reach with its own identity graph
- Simpli.fi for hyperlocal and multi-location campaigns
- Nexxen for video and CTV
- Xandr, now part of Microsoft, for CTV inventory
One name to strike off any list you find online: MediaMath filed for Chapter 11 in 2023. It now runs at a fraction of its old scale under Infillion. Plenty of articles still rank it. That tells you how rarely these lists get refreshed.
Why B2B Campaigns Fail Before the DSP Touches Them
One pattern comes up again and again. A team picks a good DSP, launches, sees a 0.05% click-through rate, panics, and blames the platform.
The click-through rate is not the problem. B2B display CTRs sit between 0.04% and 0.10% across the industry. That is normal. Clicks belong with the other vanity numbers you should have stopped reporting, and the B2B marketing metrics that prove ROI sit further down the funnel. Judge a display programme on clicks and you will cancel every campaign before it produces anything.
The real problem is usually the list.
Match Rates Tell You the Truth
Upload an account list to a DSP and only part of it resolves to real, reachable people. That share is your match rate.
A match rate below 60% to 70% is a warning. It usually means the list was built by parsing email domains, not verified business records. You then pay a DSP to bid against a list that is a third fiction.
What to do: Before launch, export your matched audience and compare the count to what you uploaded. If 5,000 accounts became 1,800 matched, fix the data before you touch the bidding.
Identity in 2026 Is Messier Than the Headlines
Google reversed third-party cookie deprecation in April 2025. It then shut down most of Privacy Sandbox that October. Many teams read this as a reprieve and stopped preparing.
That is a mistake. Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies by default, so roughly half the web is cookieless whatever Chrome does. Unified ID 2.0 needs an email login and sits near 13% adoption. Plan for 15% to 35% of your traffic being out of reach through cookies.
For B2B, this shift helps you. Account-level targeting built on firmographics, technographic data, and IP-to-company mapping never depended on cookies. Company identity is more durable than person identity.
What to do: Build audiences from verified company records plus intent data, not from retargeting pools. Refresh them monthly. B2B data decay is quiet and constant, and job changes alone will rot a static list inside two quarters.
How to Choose a Demand Side Platform
Four questions, in this order.
1. Start With the Real Cost
Add up the platform fee, data fees, verification fees, and any managed service charge. Compare that total against your budget.
Rough bands, based on what these platforms really need:
- Under $10,000 a month: StackAdapt or Basis. The Trade Desk and DV360 are not realistic.
- $10,000 to $50,000: StackAdapt, Basis, or The Trade Desk through an agency seat.
- $50,000 and up: The Trade Desk, DV360, or Amazon DSP direct.
2. Check Where Your Buyer Spends Attention
Inventory quality beats inventory volume every time. Private marketplace deals carry CPMs around 38% higher than the open exchange. They also deliver more than double the viewability and roughly 45% less fraud.
CTV deserves a look for B2B. Viewability clears 96% and completion runs above 95%. No open-web display placement comes close.
3. Ask How Your Audience Gets In
This is the question teams skip, and it is the one that decides your results. Ask:
- Can I upload CRM and account lists directly?
- Does it support the identity solutions my data partner uses?
- How long does an audience refresh take?
- Can I push exclusion lists for customers and closed-lost accounts?
- What match rate should I expect against my ideal customer profile?
Struggling to answer these? Then the platform choice can wait. Sort out how you choose a B2B data provider first.
4. Demand Proof Over a Long Cycle
B2B sales cycles run 6 to 18 months. A two-week test proves nothing.
Plan for 90 days minimum. Measure account engagement lift, view-through activity, and influenced pipeline instead of clicks.
Holdout tests give the cleanest read. Exclude 20% to 30% of your target list, then compare pipeline after 90 days.
Five Mistakes That Burn DSP Budget
- Launching before the account list is verified. The costliest mistake here, and the most common.
- Judging performance on CTR. Display influences. It does not convert on click. Around 95% of your buyers are out of market at any moment.
- Running without exclusion lists. Cut existing customers, employees, competitors, and recently closed-lost accounts. Update weekly.
- Leaving frequency uncapped. Impact peaks around 5 to 7 views per person per week and falls sharply past 12 to 15. Watch the spread, not the average. One fifth of your audience seeing an ad 30 times will wreck the mean.
- Testing for two weeks. You will kill a working programme before it compounds.
Let me soften point two slightly. A CTR far below 0.04% still signals something broken in creative or targeting. It simply should not be the number you take to the board.
The Platform Matters Less Than What You Feed It
Programmatic rewards precision and punishes assumption. The uncomfortable part is that most of the precision happens before you open a DSP at all.
You can run a poor campaign on the best platform in the category. Plenty of teams do. You can also run a strong one on a mid-tier DSP. It takes three things: a real account list, current exclusions, and a measurement window that matches how your buyers decide.
Pick the platform that fits your budget, your channels, and your team's skill. Then spend your real attention on the audience.
If the data needs work first, start with a free SMARTe account and test coverage against your own ICP. Ten credits, no card.
