Today, PubMatic announced that it is offering a next rev in its publisher-side yield optimization platform which notably includes “guaranteed inventory yield management” and possibly puts it into competition with Yieldex, which has been working the direct sales optimization side for publishers for a while now. See the release.
AdExchanger.com spoke to PubMatic’s CEO Rajeev Goel about the implications of this iteration of the PubMatic platform.
AdExchanger.com: Is this the PubMatic answer for the Supply-Side or Sell-Side Platform (SSP)?
PubMatic pioneered the ad network optimization space with its founding in 2006. However, it’s clear that publishers need much more than just ad network optimization. As the market has evolved, media buying has evolved, and new opportunities such as audience data and real-time bidding (RTB) have emerged, publishers need a much more advanced platform for managing their ad revenue and brands. It’s fair to refer to this as a sell-side platform (SSP).
The SSP of the future will manage both guaranteed inventory (what a publisher’s sales force sells directly) and non-guaranteed inventory (monetized via ad networks and exchanges). But it will do far more than just sell this inventory – it will integrate audience data from third parties, it will actively manage the publisher’s brand and protect from malware and poor quality ads, it will provide an integrated yield curve across both the direct and indirect sales channel, it will provide a controlled RTB environment for the publisher, and more. We think that the new PubMatic Premier is the first offering in the market to provide publishers with all of this and we’re looking forward to expanding it as well.
Can you expand on how PubMatic’s platform manages “Guaranteed
Inventory Yield Management” and provides insights? Any examples?
Traditionally the non-guaranteed sales channel (ad networks and exchanges) has been distinct and separate from the guaranteed ad sales channel (publisher’s sales force selling direct). However, that’s changing and we’re coming into an environment where there is overlap in terms of the buyers and price points for these two channels. Audience buying and RTB are two key trends that are driving this. As a result, publishers need the ability to manage an integrated yield curve across both channels as well as pricing and inventory insights to make the right ad serving decisions for their entire business.
There are many examples of this in play. For example, a publisher might sell directly a campaign for $6. And there might be an RTB buyer that is paying $8 for a certain set of impressions. Without proper yield management across guaranteed and non-guaranteed channels, most publishers would sell the $6 campaign first and the $8 campaign second because they manage the two channels separately. Obviously that will leave money on the table – our solution manages across channels and finds these opportunities, which can yield 10-20% higher revenue across the ENTIRE business.
Here’s another example we see often – a major publisher has a 25% sell-through rate for direct sales but yet under-delivers on many campaigns, again leaving revenue on the table. This is often caused by the publisher not having good audience and traffic insight across both the guaranteed and non-guaranteed sales channels, so they’re not able to see these opportunities before budget expires or allocate inventory properly. Our solution manages holistically across sales channels to close this gap.
How/When will this product get rolled out? Do existing publisher clients get this automatically?
We are rolling this out in stages, and working with beta partners in the process as we do this. Some of this functionality is included in our existing agreements with publishers – for example our Data Firewall, Creative Review Dashboard, and audience reporting solutions, which bring together audience data from many leading players in the market such as BlueKai, eXelate, RapLeaf and more. Other functionality will be available under a separate agreement that the publisher can opt for.
Our mission is to provide publishers with the greatest control of their ad revenue and brand, and we believe that PubMatic Premier is a huge step forward in providing publishers with an advanced solution to do exactly that.
