When you first read the word “site-served“- the first answer that comes to your mind is when an ad is specifically served on a specific site it is a site-served campaign.
But NO it is not like that. A campaign is basically divided into two division – site served or third party served.How the ad is served decides the type of the campaign.So when a campaign is said to be site served it means the ad is not being served from a third party like Google Campaign Manager 360, Flashtalking, Doubleverify, sizmek ,etc. but site served (own hosted) which means all the ad metrics like impressions, clicks etc. will be publisher or site serving the ad dependent.
Site served campaigns are less costly than third party serve but the client has to be totally dependent on the publisher end for metrics. Also site served are faster than third party as page load time is less in site served since it reduces one layer of communication which is done between site and third party ad server to get the ad.But the major advantage the third party ad serving has is the report that is provided daily and is easy to pull as they have a user friendly interface. This is the reason maximum advertiser are moving to third party ad serving.
Example: When as an advertiser (Mastercard) you do not provide third party ad tags to the publisher (nytimes.com) but direct creatives in jpeg or png format or html, the publisher will directly upload the creatives on their server to run the campaign. In this scenario, the campaign will be termed as site served whereas if in the other case mastercard or any advertiser provides the creative in the form of third party ad tags, the campaign will be termed as third party served campaign.