Optimizing Market Segmentation Granularity in RTB Advertising: A Computational Experimental Study

Real Time Bidding (RTB) is a novel business model of online computational advertising with the integration of Internet economy and big data analysis. It can help advertisers achieve the precision marketing through the market segmentation strategies of Demand Side Platforms (DSPs). Based on a mathematical programming approach, this paper studied DSPs' strategies for market segmentation, and established a selection model of the granularity for segmenting RTB advertising markets. We proposed to validate our model using the computational experiment approach, and the experimental results show that: 1) with the increasing refinement of the market segmentation granularity, the total revenue has a tendency of a rise first followed by a decline, 2) the optimal granularity of market segmentation will be significantly influenced by the number of advertisers on the DSP, but less influenced by the number of ad requests. Our findings show the crucial role of market segmentation on the RTB advertising effect, and indicate that the DSPs should adjust their market segmentation strategies according to their total number of advertisers. Our findings also highlight the importance of advertisers as well as the characteristics of the target audiences in DSPs' market segmentation decisions.