Supply path optimization is a topic that has the industry buzzing right now because a lot of changes are happening, and not all of them are easy to understand. Whether you’re on the sell or buy side of the equation, tracking these changes and understanding how they may impact your business going forward is important. 

A panel at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O in New York City on September 26 titled “The SPO Squeeze” dove into this subject headfirst. The chat was moderated by Sarah Sluis, Executive Editor, AdExchanger, and featured Jess Breslav, Chief Customer Officer, Index Exchange; Will Doherty, VP Inventory Development, Publishers, The Trade Desk; Katie Evans, Chief Operating Officer, Magnite; and Lara Koenig, Global Head of Product, MiQ. 

Increasing Value and Efficiency in SPO

Koenig is on the buy side of the SPO journey, and she shared that SPO is a crucial problem for buyers to tackle right now. The current setup creates a slew of problems for marketers. 

For example, there are too many intermediaries in the supply chain. “About three years ago, we  got supply chain logs from our DSPs. We thought we were buying from six different supply vendors, but when we looked at the logs, we figured out that in reality 384 downstream vendors are participating in our auctions, which leads to so many safety, suitability and economic risks,” Koenig explained. 

Marketers can succumb to many pitfalls, and almost as many folks are trying to solve the problems with SPO. The problem is that with the multitude of emerging platforms the goal of programmatic – to simplify the process for buyers – is being lost. 

One potential solution to this problem is bidding through open paths. This eliminates some of the hops back and forth and saves time. Doherty says this also ensures you see the true number of avails, giving the buyer a more accurate depiction of a supplier’s inventory, which allows them to compare and contrast publishers. 

“What open path has allowed us to do and where the market is going is it’s starting to consolidate around the top. As that consolidation occurs, the economic benefits for both the publisher and the buyer become much clearer,” Doherty notes.

As an industry, we need to start redefining the word “value” in terms of partnerships. Breslav says, “Gone are the days where you add a partner and expect immediate outcomes, immediate ad spend.” The value may be in benchmarking performance and relaying that information to partners. 

Open path is future-facing, says Evans, toward new technologies like CTV, which operates very differently. “We’re trying to create an ecosystem that is going to be successful for the future, based on all the technologies that have developed over the last five or six years,” she says.  

Seeing Double: Duplicate Impressions Limit Value

Duplication in impressions is a concern when each publisher is partnering with 35-40 SSPs. SSPs are all sending the same things to DSPs, and the DSPs are not getting the rest of the picture, creating problems for buyers. 

From a buyer’s perspective, says Koenig, partner companies are largely doing the same thing – collapsing intermediaries to make buying more direct. The pressing question now is whether supply chain intermediaries add any value. 

Doherty notes there are two types of duplication – publishers working with multiple partners and within SSPs themselves, tuning up or tuning down traffic, which leads to intra-SSP duplication. Some DSPs will lean into solely getting their match traffic, possibly even only for what they historically bid on. This can reduce your bottom line and limit your reach.

Decisions based on a DSP’s customer portfolio and what buyers have bought in the past can limit pathways for new buyers and over complicate the process, forcing buyers to work with multiple DSPs to get the reach they’re looking for. Koenig believes there should be transparency in the process that empowers buyers to advocate for the pathways they want to pursue. The current process also hurts the SSP because they are sending avails that aren’t monetized. 

To combat this, Breslav recommends better communication between SSPs and DSPs. “Filtering done correctly helps our partners to be more successful and buyers on the other side of it. Part of that is about a conversation making sure that we are all aligned on what we are sending each other and using traffic shaping as a tool when it’s effective,” she shares. 

A View Toward the Future

Communication within the industry is crucial for making sure pain points continue to be addressed and that we remain on the same page. In the face of a shifting digital landscape with emerging technologies, ultimately we all want the same thing – to succeed. 

The complicated landscape makes it more difficult than ever for SSPs to drive positive outcomes for publishers. According to Breslav, there is a flight to quality and safety as well as a focus on sustainability, and all of these considerations are changing how the industry views strategy and innovation. 

She adds, “I think there’s an incredibly healthy dialogue happening in our ecosystem right now, and I really appreciate it. I think about what I read in the trades and the push towards sustainability. Our community feels incredibly active. I think that that’s a wonderful thing.”

Looking ahead, experts agreed that it is important to avoid letting new technologies like CTV fall into the same trap we’re currently in with duplication and intermediary traffic. In the coming years, there will likely be some consolidation of players, particularly intermediaries, in addition to greater efficiency and quality. The consensus was cautious optimism about what the future holds. 

The post Escaping the Trap: Supply Path Optimization Can Create Transparency and Increase Efficiency appeared first on AdMonsters.

“Grouchy” Greg Watkins is the co-founder of AllHipHop.com, a website that has been doing successful business in the music space since its inception in 1997. The site’s mission continues to be the same as it was then, a place to share news, feature articles, and any other pertinent content for people who make and enjoy hip-hop. 

Most importantly, the site has an incredible reach, which it achieves largely thanks to Watkins’ knowledge and expertise in the online advertising space. Leading up to his talk at PubForum in Coronado Island, California, we caught up with Watkins to learn more about his career journey and how he is helping others learn the ins and outs of ad tech. 

Music & Technology Paved the Way for Watkins’ Career

Watkins says he knew he was destined to be a part of the music industry since he was only three years old, listening to tapes on his parents’ tape recorders at home. When he was just a kid, he also began tinkering with technology. 

“My dad had an old reel-to-reel machine in his basement that he listened to music on. He had transistor radios that I would take apart and look at,” he says. 

As he grew up and began getting involved in music, he started a recording studio. Then he went to the Art Institute of Philadelphia, where he received an Associate’s Degree in Music, Business, and Audio Engineering. 

By 1996, Watkins was pressing records and having success selling those online to people worldwide. That’s when he registered AllHipHop.com, which he originally conceived as a way to sell records but quickly morphed into the hip-hop news site it is today, with the help of his long-time business partner Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur.

Watkins Was an Early Adopter of & Believer in the Power of the Internet 

Witnessing the evolution of communication through the web via early programs like AOL convinced Watkins that the Internet would be the way of the future. At that time, he began reading trade publications to understand the ins and outs of this new communication tool. 

“By ‘96 or ‘97, I don’t want to say I was a veteran of the internet, but I knew my way around. At that time, I knew HTML, how to code, and how to make websites. I saw it as a logical step when I saw people buying the music online, and how it reduced my overhead by having a direct-to-consumer relationship,” he explains. 

That direct-to-consumer relationship completely changed how Watkins and his team sold music and connected with their audience. He knew then that the internet would change how we share news and information globally. 

Awareness of the Internet’s Advertising Potential 

If you asked Watkins back when he launched his website whether he would be so involved in ad tech today, he says the answer would be both yes and no. 

“I’ve been reading the trades since ‘94, 95. I visited San Francisco. I saw Yahoo in its early days before they were even a worldwide known brand – I saw cabs riding around with ‘Yahoo’ on top and billboards around San Francisco. That blew my mind that an internet company was marketing in that manner. That opened my eyes to see there is an advertising business here,” he shares. 

Even so, the urban advertising system was basically nonexistent until the year 2000, which is when AllHipHop.com began to dive into the world of online ads. Watkins notes, “I helped launch our first ad server. I bought it off the Internet, ‘software as a service.’” He began launching ad campaigns, doing the creative, HTML, and tracking codes with a small team of sales reps. 

At first, the advertisers were direct-to-consumer marketers, but AllHipHop.com landed a campaign with the anti-smoking organization The Truth. The money from that campaign helped the website hire more writers and salespeople who did brand cold calling. This eventually led to some big fish advertisers like American Airlines and Pepsi. 

“I did know that the advertising business would be big on the Internet and that this would be a way to directly speak to consumers in a way that possibly had never happened in media history. When you’re dealing with television, it’s usually a one-way transaction. When you’re dealing with the internet, especially at the time, you could develop actual relationships with these consumers, depending on what type of ad campaign you’re running,” he notes. 

Understanding the Supply Chain Leads to Success

Watkins says his biggest advice for publishers looking to succeed in this industry is to understand the supply chain we are all a part of. 

AllHipHop.com started as a direct selling business, then it began dealing with ad networks. When programmatic started, the supply chain became more complicated and less transparent. 

Ten years later, the supply chain has become even more complex and even wasteful, up to the billions of dollars in terms of waste spent by brands and agencies. This is what Watkins says he will be speaking to at PubForum. 

“There are a variety of headwinds impacting our industry right now that will probably be issues for the entire ecosystem in the supply chain for advertising over the next two years. Those are going to be some of the things I’m talking about and telling publishers: what to look out for, and how to avoid bad actors in the space. I’ll also be giving some actual testimonials,” he says. 

Making Ad Tech a More Inclusive Space

The lack of diversity and inclusion in the ad tech space confounds Watkins. “One thing that has always surprised me is the fact that Black, Latin, and other minority-owned businesses still have this difficulty in the 21st century having their audiences respected. We have huge audiences, yet only 1 percent of ad budgets go to Black and minority-owned and targeted websites.” 

For his part, Watkins makes it a point to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to college students and mentor minority owners of small businesses.

“I speak at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and colleges, in general to encourage the students to understand ad tech, one for the impact that it has on society and how we see ourselves, but two, there has to be human capital available for these companies to hire for change to happen,” he states. He believes it’s important to make sure these students know how low lucrative ad tech can be.

He also is involved with BOMESI, the Black Owned Media Equity and Sustainability Institute, which assists publishers with resources, grants, and training to help serve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the publishing industry. “I mentor a variety of these brands and some of their executives on what’s happening in the business,” Watkins says. 

To hear more about Watkins’ journey and his advice for publishers looking to succeed, make sure to attend his keynote speech, “Lessons From the Trenches: 25 Years as a Publisher Navigating Ad Tech,” at AdMonsters’ upcoming PubForum in Coronado, California on August 7. 

The post Ahead of His Time: How “Grouchy” Greg Watkins Leveraged the Power of the Internet Into a Successful Publishing Career appeared first on AdMonsters.

Predictably, the economy, the growth of attention metrics, and cookie deprecation are top worries for publishers. What is surprising is just how low supply path optimization (SPO) is on their priority list. Only 30% of publishers say it’s important for them.

Despite less than a third of marketers ranking it high in priority, some see SPO as more of a concern for a buyer than a publisher. “SPO is a buy side issue and publishers are concerned about how it’s impacting them but the other issues are bigger concerns, SPO will always be there,” explained Jana Meron, the founder of Lioness Strategies and seasoned digital media monetization and data strategy leader. In other words, SPO is a persistent, but low-grade issue.

But others believe publishers have a vested interest in promoting SPO. The open programmatic markets can be convoluted at best and, for buyers keen to stay within a specific price range, they may be dissuaded from purchasing quality inventory if it has multiple intermediaries demanding a piece of the CPM paid. And all those commissions mean that publishers collect a smaller percentage of revenue for their inventory. 

What’s more, by focusing on SPO, publishers have more direct access to gaining insights into the demand for their inventory, potentially improving transparency in the bidding process.  All of this begs the question: why aren’t more publishers dedicating resources to ensuring the exchanges have direct access to their inventory?

Why Aren’t Publishers Concerned about SPO?

Another possible interpretation of the survey results is that SPO means different things for different types of publishers. Discussions of SPO tend to focus on unintended consequences, such as publishers losing access to buyers if an ad exchange opts to eliminate suppliers as part of its SPO initiative. 

But according to Scott Messer, ​​Principal and Founder of Messer Media, legitimate publishers shouldn’t worry about that as supply path optimization is a correction coming first for the most egregious of publishers.

For instance, In early April, Digiday ran a series of articles about declining prices in the open RTB markets due to ad tech vendors reducing the number of auctions they “listen to.”  At issue: low-quality publishers were initiating an excessive number of concurrent auctions for the same impression, hoping to get the best possible price. Wary of competing against themselves, advertisers flocked to the safe havens of private and curated marketplaces.

“Complicating your supply path is a tactic to drive higher yields,” said Messer. Reputable publishers with genuine value propositions have little need for ploys, which is why he believes publishers are moving towards curated marketplaces. “The average publisher on the good side isn’t worried about SPO because, if anything, it will actually drive more dollars into their pockets. Closing cluttered paths make it harder for the less worthy.”

Messer is an advocate of curated marketplaces, and deal creation as a service (DCaaS). In these scenarios, platforms create a custom marketplace for an individual buyer, one that is free of the low-quality publishers that exist for the express purpose of selling ads.  In this respect, curated marketplaces offer buyers a faster and more transparent path into SPO.

The survey data, however, was surprising when considering Messer’s perspective. The survey found, in fact, that large publishers are more than eight times more likely than small publishers to report having at least 10 monetization partners. And high CPM publishers, perhaps the best proxy for what Messner refers to as “reputable”, tend to have more monetization partners than low CPM ones.

Another theory behind why publishers may not be prioritizing SPO: they simply lack the resources to do more than acknowledge its importance. “I believe that Supply Path Optimization is one of those catchphrases like the cookieless Future.  We are all talking about it, but no one has really figured out what to do about it,” explained Terry Guyton-Bradley, a programmatic strategist who co-founded MediaZinc and spent many years working for multiple publishers running their programmatic operations.

“Unfortunately, most publishers don’t have the resources or time to truly analyze their programmatic partners in order to make meaningful changes to their programmatic stacks. As you can see from the survey results, the economy is having a significant impact on our industry and causing drastic cuts to investment in technology and personnel.” 

Guyton-Bradley warns his partners not to make any business decisions without data to support their assumptions. In his view, the benefits of SPO to publishers are still a hypothesis. Things may change once there’s real data to back up the SPO advocates claims. 

SPO is a Hot Topic for Many

Although Emodo’s survey found that only 30% of publishers consider SPO a hot topic, it’s still a top priority for companies like Emodo, which sees it as much more than simply cutting out middlemen to find the shortest path to inventory. “What it really means is eliminating redundancy by offering unique value and providing the most direct route to that value,” Damian McKenna, COO at Emodo, told Street Fight. 

Emodo also aligns with Messer’s point about curated marketplaces as an essential strategy for buyers and publishers and has a team dedicated to actively creating and optimizing Emodo Curated Deals.

The post Why Aren’t Publishers Concerned about Supply Path Optimization (SPO)? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Given the push towards refinement in consumer targeting, data clean rooms, the Twitter implosion, the rise of retail media, and legislations set to remap leveraging data, the buying universe is quietly scrambling for alternatives with data integrity at the core.  

Who is better than a long-term industry darling that has coveted the consumer better than anyone in its private digital sanctuary – the Apple ecosystem.

Why Apple?

Since its inception, Apple has operated one of the most respectable “ecosystems” in the modern era of technology.  

Their “experience design” acumen has orchestrated one of the most consumer-friendly operating environments, from hardware to software to peripherals, based on a singular aim of mastering interoperability at the highest threshold.  

While Apple has stayed the course in its core commitment to seamless consumer experiences, blame it on the push for 1st Party Data and the industry backpedaling on the reliance of Walled Gardens, signaling its time to enter the DSP business. Recent big tech data lawsuits and CPRA stipulations have created a slow-burning dumpster fire, only accelerating Apple’s market opportunity.

Apple’s Value Proposition to Ad Tech

Apple’s true value stems from the ownership of mindshare, or what we are now terming the Attention Stack. And if attention is the ultimate real estate, Apple owns most of the prized oceanfront properties with millionaire-style mansions.   

Given that their ecosystem is a user-driven community where product development is core to the “user experience,” the expectation will be that their DSP solution will be less about SAAS. An Apple-operated DSP should be centered around their ability to allow brands to effectively connect with consumers given the intimate knowledge they possess about them – an advantage they have all to themselves now.

The Lost Consumer View Created by Apple

Apple set the digital universe on fire with their iOS update, which introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention and App Tracking Transparency (ATT) changes in 2021.  

The update kneecapped ad tech’s ability to target and measure performance, creating a significant ‘signal loss’ (or data attributed to the amount of web browsing and ecommerce behavior). 

Now, Apple can offer its own solution for that by launching its very own DSP. How convenient of them.  

Furthermore, consider other statistical factors such as 30% of global traffic is unaddressable because of cookieless browsers such as Safari. Or that another 20% are unreachable due to match-rate issues between platforms and users refusing cookies on publisher websites. Apple is also likely to accelerate the data graph conversation (i.e., music graph for Spotify, movie graph for Amazon) and architect one that merges content consumption, app behaviors, software usage, hardware purchase, etc., in a way ad tech has never seen before. They gear their experience design philosophy towards openly acknowledging all the technology gaps in the marketplace and closing them. Checkmate.

Apple Powering the SPO Conversation

Apple’s DSP launch may evolve into a page from the forthcoming Supply Path Optimization conversation, where sellers and buyers are becoming more selective about which ad tech partners they allow to participate in programmatic auctions and setups. 

The SPO movement stems from the need by brands to get closer to 1st party data (and proprietary data) offered through partners. Apple’s DSP could serve as the engine for a larger PMP framework, which would have substantial appeal to buying agency options.

Apple in the Data Clean Room Conversation

While the data clean room conversation is all the rave, much of the results still need to be conclusive.  

Clean rooms are environments where tech platforms mix their first-party data with others to gain insights without violating user privacy – which is paramount at Apple. Even mapping other data signals outside of content consumption patterns (location, social, search) onto my audience profile is something Apple is poised to do fluidly. In contrast, others pontificate and stumble around in similar endeavors. 

Why Apple is Poised to Succeed

Apple long existed as the North Star for industry reasons ranging from profit margins, product efficacy and integrity, Steve Jobs factor, management and leadership, retail experience, product design, and so on.  

The ad tech community will assume the same potential in launching a DSP which will translate into the sector granting them grace (while they make missteps) as they carve out a new chapter in their business model. 

Above all else, Apple is very prudent in studying the mistakes of its frenemies in the business while solving consumer points of friction as an operational mantra.  

The post The Lost Consumer View Created by Apple Solved Through Their Own DSP appeared first on AdMonsters.

We spent so much time talking bout how hot newsletters are that we decided to jump on the trend!

Since we follow a lot of ad-tech industry and adjacent news (and scroll through even more of ad tech Twitter), and not every happening makes it on AdMonsters.com or to our events, we launched a weekly newsletter featuring a curated selection of ad tech news and analysis written by AdMonsters Editorial Director, Gavin Dunaway and Senior Editor, Lynne d Johnson.

With The Wrapper, we summarize exciting news items that catch our eyes and then link them to wider developments in digital media and advertising. And hey, we also aim to point you in the direction of great podcasts and compelling industry voices to follow on social media.

Here are some of our hottest editions from the year that was 2020.

AdMonsters Wrapper: There Can Only Be One (Supply Path)

A few weeks ago, the biggest independent DSP [The Trade Desk] laid down the law (buyers’ law!) and demanded partners de-duplicate auctions. No more of the same impression coming through three or more different pipes. And because TTD is a major source of demand in the open ecosystem, exchanges, SSPs, and publishers that want to keep seeing those dollars will comply. Read more.

AdMonsters Wrapper: The Mysteriously Missing 15%

It turns out the programmatic supply chain is even more complex than we ever imagined and the flow of funds from advertiser to publisher is a dubious practice. If you’ve been following ad tech Twitter in the past week, then you’d know that that ISBA finally released their long-awaited Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study, highlighting that premium publishers receive only half of the ad spend from brands and 15% of that spend can’t be accounted for at all. Read more.

Facebook Problems: Bigger Than Just Ad Fraud

Facebook is ankle-deep in troubles as of late. For one, I’m sure we’ll all be checking into the live stream of the big tech antitrust hearings taking place tomorrow to hear Zuck tell Congress how much America needs his company to be really fit in order to stave off undue Chines social media influences. Senior Editor, Lynne d Johnson, already has her dragon popcorn at the ready. But these are not the Facebook issues we’re referring to. Read more.

Cookie Death Worse For Pubs Than Feared

Garrett Johnson, a marketing professor at Questrom School of Business, Boston University, uncovered a more startling assessment about the value of a cookie that he posted in a Twitter thread. It looks like in the UK Competition and Market Authority’s Online Platforms and Digital Advertising Market Study, the CMA reanalyzed Google’s very own data and found that publishers’ revenues would fall up to 70%. Read more.

AdMonsters Wrapper: Rethinking Allyship in Ad Tech

In the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, the digital media and advertising industry is bearing witness to America’s civil unrest—in response to systemic racism—by asking itself some very hard questions about diversity and inclusion efforts within its own ranks. There was a flurry of response from brands in support of the protests and #BlackLivesMatter, but most with cookie-cutter templatized messaging that came off like one massive PR flex. Critics handed out gold stars for the performances but collectively wondered, “Where’s the beef?” Read more.

Facebook Boycott Collateral Damage: Pubs

We know what you’re thinking, publisher—all those big brands boycotting Facebook in July means moolah is coming your way fast! Wait, were you being sarcastic? Were we being sarcastic? We just can’t tell anymore. We’re kind of two… Well, maybe three minds at AdMonsters. While we see how premium publishers could see some additional revenue as marketers re-allocate spend, our cynical side thinks many brands were going to cut down on marketing with the third quarter and the pandemic back on the upswing. Read more.

Apple Makes the Web Take a Detour

Scroll CEO Tony Haile gave many publishers a rude awakening on Monday when he posted a gif of a link to an Atlantic article on Google.com redirecting into Apple News+. Yes, the browser (Safari) actually sent him into the Apple News+ app on his Mac. It’s not clear when this feature was introduced in Apple News+, but it seems to be on by default now. It’s also unclear which browsers the redirect works with, but for sure Apple’s Safari. Read more.

The post AdMonsters Wrapper Newsletter: Top 6 of 2020 appeared first on AdMonsters.

When multiple vendors, resellers, and other technology partners get involved, it adds more fees to the process for both buyers and sellers and ultimately causes more complexity. If a potential partner is unable to easily demonstrate how a product creates greater transparency and less latency or leads to more unique buyers participating in auctions, it puts more distance between the brand and a media owner’s inventory.

Enter Demand Path Optimization which can clean up the media selling process by increasing brand safety and allowing for better user and advertiser experiences.

What Is Demand Path Optimization?

Demand Path Optimization (DPO) connects buyers with premium inventory in the most efficient and transparent way possible, identifying the ideal bidding path per advertiser and making sure the spend can transact as expected with existing sell-side technology. Programmatic technologies provide a transparent bid process for all involved parties while offering visibility into advertiser, bidder, and demand-side platform (DSP) activity on a campaign or auction clearing price level.

How Is Demand Path Optimization Different From Supply Path Optimization?

DPO and supply path optimization (SPO) are two sides of the same coin, both looking to link buyers and sellers and prevent sales channel conflict. DPO focuses on how advertisements and impressions are sold, while SPO is concerned with how impressions are acquired to eliminate technologies or non-essential resellers with the verified log-level data as a way to find the most efficient paths possible.

Those employing SPO are concerned with the value generated by vendors, such as agencies or ad tech companies that are in the buy-side funnel. SPO provides transparency into not only cost but ROI each partner generates. Media owners practicing DPO aim to protect rate cards while preventing existing buyers from accessing the same inventory at a lower price.

How Does Demand Path Optimization Work?

Advanced integrations such as header bidding allow for true programmatic guaranteed and audience-based programmatic buying at scale while reserving inventory for direct sales to transact in a programmatic supply-side platform (SSP) or traditional primary ad server. This eliminates buyer confusion and minimizes sales channel conflict, increasing audience overlap and giving these select groups exclusive access to more overall inventory.

Because DPO provides more advertiser visibility into the bid path, publishers and their resellers are able to better monitor how ad impressions are purchased. Having that clarity, publishers can better educate buyers on how to win more auctions and garner a higher number of impressions at the best price.

Why Is Demand Path Optimization Important?

DPO enhances brand safety because there are verified paths for trusted partners ensuring that ads are placed with brand-safe content without additional tech or resellers. DPO also enables better user and advertiser experiences with fewer duplicated ads. This is because buyers have fewer paths that enable self-competition, drastically reducing the risk of filling an ad pod with the same creative multiple times through each monetization path.

Overall, eliminating buyer confusion makes video inventory more exclusive. This makes DPO particularly optimal for CTV and OTT because of its premium value and scarcity in-market. When it comes to DPO, a seller should aim to have fewer highways with tolls by partnering with technologies that make the route more efficient.

The post What Is Demand Path Optimization (DPO)? appeared first on AdMonsters.

In the halcyon days of header bidding, publishers were delighted to integrate one demand source after another into their newly integrated wrappers. But even then many knew the shopping spree couldn’t last—the amount of duplicative auctions would eventually catch up with the buy side (causing immense pain to the DSPs, but hey—they had some good times during the waterfall age) and publishers would have to determine which partners boasted unique demand.

For the last few years, evaluating demand partners in headers has been a huge topic among publishers, inspiring a playbook and countless Publisher Forum sessions—there’s even one at PubForum Santa Monica, led by Hive Media’s Jennifer Chau and Azhar Salim focusing on A/B testing. Most publishers these days seem more focused on culling demand partners and supply path optimization than popping in Johnny-come-latelys.

Which is why I was surprised to see in the latest Jounce Media RTB Supply Path Benchmarking Report—available to those with Monstership subscriptions—that auction duplication was up over the past several months. Jounce’s research through always on-bidding of 61 publishers discovered that on average a publisher had 18.3 open-auction supply paths in January 2020, versus 17.8 in December and 17 in November.

I bet I wasn’t the only one who furrowed their brow at that stat. If publishers are weaning the header ranks and further pursuing supply path optimization, the number of duplicative auctions should be going down. Even if publishers added a few partners to take advantage of eager fourth-quarter spend, you’d think that would taper off in January.

But that got me wondering about some other research AdMonsters recently conducted on fill rates with GeoEdge. The final report found that while limiting partners in the header was a key way to reduce the probability of malvertising and redirects, more demand sources present created increased bid density and ultimately higher CPMs (and fill rates).

Especially in the open auction, it’s still in publishers’ interest to keep up high bid density via a large number of demand partners—which in turn results in duplicate auctions. This puts continuing pressure on the buy side to engage in supply path optimization—publishers aren’t lying when they point out the benefits for advertisers!

There’s even more amazing data in this month’s RTB Supply Path Benchmarking Report in the Monstership section. And you can also catch Jounce Media’s Chris Kane chat with the AdMonsters content team about the fate of the open programmatic ecosystem at Publisher Forum Santa Monica, March 8-11.

The post Jounce: Duplicate Auctions Still on the Rise appeared first on AdMonsters.

Before we get into the buyers’ different methodologies, and how the effects play out for the sell side, let’s talk about why DSPs have been looking for new ways to separate the wheat from the chaff: It’s header bidding, and the massive adoption of it in the last couple years. Header bidding has been awesome for many publishers’ revenue. We talk about how great header is at strengthening these relationships between pubs and their preferred demand sources. Unfortunately, when you look at header from the DSP perspective, it’s not so direct and efficient. Imagine a publisher sending out the same bid across 10 to 20 exchanges. There’s a lot of sheer volume (for example, Digiday reported The Trade Desk went from processing around 1 million impressions per second in 2014 to 5.7 million per second in 2017), and a lot of redundancy in queries. DSPs and agencies are feeling strained, and they want some way to cut out unappealing or duplicate queries, and root out queries more likely to win.

DSPs and agencies all have different ways of cleaning up the supply path. Some make decisions algorithmically. Some make decisions through manual analysis. Some toss out excess impressions in what seems like an arbitrary fashion.

If you’d been ignoring SPO, assuming it’s “a buy-side thing,” imagine a DSP throwing away your impressions without your input. If you’re not keen on that, it’s time for you to have a conversation with your SSP—because, with or without direct input from publishers, SSPs are already making SPO decisions in an effort to make things easier for the DSPs they work with. Some SSPs are processing inventory algorithmically, determining which impressions would be relevant to send to which DSPs. Some SSPs are following practices (like, for example, putting publisher inventory into first-price auctions) that might lead certain DSPs to turn them off. In any case, as a publisher, you might have your idea of the optimal supply path, but your demand partners might have a different or even contrary idea.

On the sell side, we talk a lot about how header bidding brings the buyers and sellers closer together. SPO can either make good on that promise, or it can create deeper division.

DSPs and agencies are making SPO decisions based on what they can see on their end. If you, as a publisher, have important intel that would help buyers make decisions in your interest, it’s time to start some conversations with your SSPs and any buy-side companies you have relationships with. For example: Look at where your impressions are going. If you see a lot of them going toward one or more partners that you wouldn’t consider your “preferred” partners, that’s a conversation. Make sure your advertiser clients know which partners you’d like them to favor. And make sure your SSPs are making decisions on your behalf that you can get behind.

AdMonsters Resources:

The Publisher Side of Supply-Path Optimization: A Q&A With Rachel Parkin of CafeMedia

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AdExchanger published a lengthy explanation of the infamous hidden fees DSPs sometimes charge. It’s common knowledge in the industry that DSPs are often inclined to take a cut off of the transactions they enable, and then add extra fees on top of that. But AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis has outlined four distinct ways they may add those extra fees: 1) Burdened by the increased volume of queries header bidding has brought, DSPs may limit the number of queries per second each exchange gets, and increase that number if the exchange gives them a rebate. 2) DSPs may control for discrepancies by rounding clearing prices up, to make up for the amount of those discrepancies, or by splitting discrepancy fees with exchanges, rather than rely on the SSP’s accounting. 3) DSPs may take fees from outside data providers, or simply take the rate the data provider charged and mark it up higher for the buyer. 4) DSPs may charge buyers extra for access to curated inventory. The AdExchanger story gets into much more detail and offers some insider-y examples, and it’s worth the read if you have a few minutes.

Retargeters Make Moves Toward Gaining Consent for Tracking

When Apple announced it was putting a time limit on the use of third-party tracking cookies in Safari, people wondered how the retargeters would deal. When it became clear how GDPR would require consent for EU users to be tracked, people wondered how the retargeters would deal. Digiday reports Criteo and AdRoll are at least making moves toward gaining user consent to be tracked–serving messages to users while browsing that will allow the user to opt into having their data collected. The catch is in how those opt-ins are presented to the user. AdRoll’s message says, “Click on this page to allow AdRoll to use cross-site tracking,” even though the only options to click are the “x” button (you usually just click an x to close the message box, right, not to allow permissions?), or a link to learn more. Criteo’s message encourages the user to click on any link “to use Criteo’s user-friendly, cross-site tracking technology to get relevant offers from reputable brands,” with a single link to opt out. But instead of saying something like “to opt out of being tracked,” it says “to disable Criteo services.” No doubt what you’re doing when you opt out is disabling Criteo services, but most people on the internet haven’t heard of companies like Criteo and AdRoll, much less what kind of services they offer. Digiday suggests this is going to be a lingering challenge for companies that rely on collecting third-party data. It’s like if a stranger is pounding at your front door–you don’t recognize this person, and you’re not likely to let them in, even if they’re holding, say, a pizza.

Goodbye, Facebook M, Whatever You Were

Facebook is killing off its Messenger virtual assistant M. M never got out of beta, and AdWeek reported all of its users were in California. M was powered by a combination of AI and actual human contractors who “trained” the system. Facebook says they’ll be taking the insights the humans generated and ply them toward future AI solutions. M was supposed to be able to make purchases, deliver packages, book travel, send money, hail rideshares, create polls and handle other day-to-day activities. It could also make suggestions related to daily-life stuff like shopping and entertainment. Why Facebook is putting the brakes on M is not entirely clear. Was it because they offering a free service other companies charge for by the minute? Was it impossible to hire enough humans to make M scale the way it had intended? Whatever the case, it’s interesting that Facebook is apparently pulling the humans off of virtual assistant services, while adding humans to pull the newsfeed algorithm away from recommending fake and incendiary news stories.

New IAB Specs for Automated Guaranteed

The IAB Tech Lab released OpenDirect 2.0, or its recommended specs for automated guaranteed ads. Let’s specify what we mean by “automated guaranteed,” since people in ad tech and media often use similar phrases interchangeably, even when they describe totally different products or strategies. These are not real-time transactions; they’re negotiated ahead of time, directly, between buyer and seller, and the inventory is guaranteed. RFP and ad trafficking are automated, and OpenDirect is a spec for that automated piece (version 1.0 came out in 2015). That’s the final piece of the OpenMedia package. According to the Tech Lab, the updated spec is designed to enable cross-platform order management, to allow publishers to reserve guaranteed inventory for a variety of agencies and advertisers, to enable publishers and buyers to negotiate prices, to allow advertisers to discover new deals on inventory.

Blockchain and the Internet of Things: A Natural Combination?

What’s blockchain have to do with the Internet of Things? Heck, it can feel like blockchain has something to do with almost everything digital, if you know how to angle it. MarTech Today predicts the IoT will bring a change in the advertising/marketing dialogue. Basically, it’ll move us away from being advertised products, and toward being advertised services (for those products, or otherwise). Kaleido Insights has released a report on “The Internet of Trusted Things,” which says blockchain or something like it (a decentralized ledger, in any case) could play a major role in managing signals from all of these devices. According to the report, that kind of system could be really important in tracking device maintenance and managing the supply chain—all kinds of transactions related to the devices.

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Amid all of those queries, they want to find the bids that are most likely to win their auctions. They’re using a variety of strategies, either algorithmic or manual, to locate those bids. The sell-side problem is, those strategies might not be what any given publisher wants. The buyers might be optimizing by giving preference to SSPs that aren’t actually the publisher’s preferred partners. And maybe there’s a good reason for that–maybe the publisher’s preferred SSP is following practices that are inconvenient or opaque from a DSP’s perspective.

So, it’s incumbent upon publishers to get in and make sure DSPs and SSPs are on the right, uh, path. Last month at our Publisher Forum in Nashville, Rachel Parkin, CafeMedia’s SVP, Strategy and Sales, led a lively and comprehensive session about how publishers can (and should) get involved in supply path optimization. If you’re a publisher, you’re going to want takeaways you can act on ASAP, so that’s what we’re sharing with you in this first installment of our Slides of Our Lives series.

Here’s Rachel’s slide addressing action items: You need to get on the phone or email, start conversations with all of your demand partners, your advertiser clients, and anyone else along the supply chain you can. Learn how they’re doing SPO, and let them know how those SPO strategies are beneficial or detrimental to you. Do housecleaning among your own partners–if any don’t comply with your business needs, it’s okay to cut them off. And look closely at how your selling strategies are contributing to the query overload buyers are experiencing. Take steps to simplify it.

Now keep this slide as a reminder of what you need to do.

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