With so many tools and services at our fingertips, dedicating time to find the best deal has become almost second nature. Whether a person is looking for airfare, shopping for car insurance, or even when seeking an upgrade on a Smart TV, comparing prices across sellers and retailers is standard practice. After all, the quality remains largely the same regardless of where you make the purchase.
However, when it comes to purchasing streaming video inventory programmatically, assessing buys solely on price is not always the best approach – especially for commercial ad break inventory in the growing streaming television ecosystem. While premium video inventory can often come at a higher cost, this is because most of the time it offers a higher chance of reaching the desired target audiences and driving the business outcomes advertisers are seeking.
The key for buyers is to consider the entirety of the inventory they are buying, what they are looking to achieve, and what will help them get there. Here are four critical factors - beyond price - that advertisers should take into account when making decisions on what inventory they should purchase to best position themselves for success.
1. Priority
Often, buyers coming from display or online video backgrounds are drawn to inventory with lower price floors when comparing the same publisher in two different SSPs or curation services. We need to think about this differently in streaming television. For example, if Publisher A’s inventory is available through SSP X for $20 and SSP Y for $25, it’s natural to gravitate toward the lower-cost option. But that’s barely scratching the surface.
It’s quite possible that SSP Y’s $25 price floor is set at a higher priority in the publisher’s ad decisioning technology (the ad server) vs SSP X’s $20. Why is priority important and what can a better position help you achieve?
• Increase the likelihood for your brand to win a position in the ad break you covet
• Minimize the instances of losing out due to competitive separation
• Maintain your intended campaign spend pacing
• Deliver more impressions against your desired target audience
The attractiveness of those favorable outcomes should warrant the higher price tag. It’s essential to dig deeper with suppliers and tech partners to understand the full picture.
2. Content Type
Content type should play a significant role in the price that’s being paid – and how to evaluate price when making a comparison. Buyers need to understand the content mix. Is it all available content from a publisher or is it over-indexed in one area like live programming or library video-on-demand (VOD)?
The content mix can and will affect the price buyers pay. For example, live event content, especially sports and special events or premieres, will drive a premium. As will content from flagship direct-to-consumer services with very low ad loads. However, in both instances there is the potential benefit of additional reach and higher viewer engagement.
3. Signals & Bid Objects
A critical factor in buying video programmatically, especially streaming, is the quality and volume of signals or identifiers being passed in the bidstream. Bid requests can offer enriched data about the audience viewing the video asset, what device type is being used (focus on the big screen!), and more detail about the content being consumed. Sometimes, this benefit of increased exposure to enhanced signals will result in an elevated CPM, but paying that premium means you’ll be making a more informed decision when bidding on a given ad opportunity.
Having more insight into who’s watching, and what they’re watching, allows advertisers to optimize targeting based on campaign objectives. So, while the impression may cost a little more, the positive impact on campaign performance is a prudent trade-off. If lack of signals causes questionable decisions on what you’re buying, is it worth the lower price?
4. Supply Path Transparency
In streaming TV, the publisher ad server is the most critical piece of technology when determining the advertisers that will run in each commercial ad break. This happens through the unified auction decision where eligible advertisers – across both direct sold and programmatic demand – are selected for placement based on a pre-determined set of rules and criteria. As a buyer, it’s best to be as close as possible to ad server to help ensure you can effectively compete and get your brand message in front of viewers.
If a lower cost opportunity seems attractive, but on closer inspection it’s actually a couple hops removed from the unified auction – is it still as attractive? It’s important that you ask current (and future) curation partners how they’re connected to the ad server. Winning an auction downstream, even at a desirable price, doesn’t guarantee the ad impression will actually run in programming and deliver to the viewer. The net-net here is: advertisers should seek to understand their supply path in order to make sound investment choices. And remember – if there are extra stops along the way, someone has to get paid.
Invest in the Right Supply for the Right Outcome
Bargain hunting may look great on a planning spreadsheet, but it doesn’t always yield the best results when investing in streaming supply programmatically. TV is very much a “you get what you pay for” medium and not all inventory is created equal – especially when taking the aforementioned factors into consideration. Brands aiming to reach their audience and compel action - whether that’s a website visit, in-store purchase, or to drive awareness - need to focus on outcomes. Cutting corners on price may end up costing more in the long run if the business goals are not achieved.
The smart approach is to work with partners who provide the confidence needed to find and reach valuable audiences. Ask those partners the tough questions about what the quoted price represents.
Buyers should prioritize partners who provide direct access to the unified auction through an optimized supply path, ensuring premium video inventory reaches the intended audiences effectively because the right supply, delivered in the right context, will always be worth the price.
This article was written by Bill Hanley who is the Senior Director of National Agency Sales at FreeWheel, where he leads efforts to optimize publisher monetization through Freewheel’s advanced programmatic marketplace products and solutions for streaming television. With over a decade of experience in adtech, Bill has consistently delivered cutting-edge supply-side innovations to the buy-side, empowering agencies and brands to effectively engage in the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem. His career, which began in linear TV distribution, has evolved alongside the industry's shift to digital, streaming, and addressable capabilities.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.