We’re often asked how much it costs to make a Trading Desk system. We literally just the other day received this letter:
“…I must know how much it costs to develop a complete Agency Trading Desk, even just a ballpark figure… It would be a big help if you could give me an approximate cost…”

When you start developing what our correspondents imply by an Agency Trading Desk (ATD), it turns out that their understandings differ.

We have several ATDs at various stages of development. Before starting development, we looked at quite a few commercial systems. “Looked at” isn’t the best word, but maybe evaluate; by this we mean our analysts combed the length and breadth of functions and conducted a detailed analysis of the fundamental features.

We’ll soon be placing a description of several systems here. We will start with TheTradeDesk and Cappture. These choices may seems somewhat strange. TheTradeDesk is without a doubt the leader in its field; it’s a full DSP with a very richly functional ATD, especially in terms of RTB purchasing. Cappture is a new and, at the moment, fairly unknown system. As it turned out, one of our Japanese clients, a digital agency representative, uses exactly these systems and wanted to create several hybrid functions in their own ATD system.
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