> That's not a scenario specific to real time bidding though. You could also just buy a regular ad and do that. With a regular ads (ad words), you don't get to

> That's not a scenario specific to real time bidding though. You could also just buy a regular ad and do that. With a regular ads (ad words), you don't get to target based on cookie, geo, or other identifying characteristics in real time. Through programmatic ad exchanges you can do it in real time since every auction contains all the information to perform the targeting and enhance your models; the cookie, the url where the ad was going to be displayed, the browser characteristics, etc (read RTB for that). > How can you associate the data from bids you didn't win to the data you get from ads that you did win and serve? Even with cookie syncing that doesn't necessarily reveal when a past/future bid opportunity matches a user you already know (unless you bid on it and win) Associating between auctions and wins is simple, they share the same id. You listen to a different stream for bid result notifications. Moreover, your own embedded pixel will give you the information upon impression. The key here is that the auction, what you get by just listening, comes already with all the information; if you listen enough, you can build the full browsing history of the cookies you track. Using this information you can build models to predict where these specific cookies will go next, and show them ads or alter the publisher context they are exposed to in order to route them where you want to route them. B2C marketing and political propaganda services are all about that.