Meet Our OTT Advertising Platform
Welcome to our Blog Series! We’re excited to share regular updates with you about a particular facet of our holistic omnichannel OTT advertising platform. Last time, we dove into the details on ad pods and slots, and ad pod construction. This week, we’re sharing insights into different ways to auction OTT inventory and expose ad pods/slots.
Ad Pod Bidding: Auctioning Inventory
Our complimentary white paper, the OTT/CTV Advertising eBook, goes into all kinds of details about the different ways publishers can auction their inventory, from open auctions, to private exchange (PMP) deals, to direct deals like preferred and guaranteed. All are available within the Smaato platform.
Header bidding is also available for OTT inventory. What is header bidding? Header bidding is a real-time pre-auction that enables multiple ad exchanges to bid on the same inventory simultaneously. The highest bid wins. As an alternative to the traditional waterfall, header bidding creates a level bidding playing field, while improving demand (and eCPMs) for publishers.
Prebid, a trusted open source header bidding solution, offers a way to unlock programmatic potential for OTT inventory. By centralizing demand with Prebid, publishers can increase yield and boost revenues, while marketers have an opportunity to extend their reach. Plus, Publishers can even add bidders via Smaato’s SPX UI to compete against Smaato’s own demand. (This is part of Smaato’s Unified Bidding: Bring Your Own Demand feature, also powered by Prebid.) Not only does this help boost the competition, but also helps ensure better fill.
To learn how to integrate with Prebid and Smaato’s demand, check out our developer docs.
Ad Pod Exposure
Some platforms may limit how publishers can auction their inventory. At Smaato, we’re all about giving publishers control.
There are two ways publishers can auction inventory: per slot or per pod.
What Are the Advantages to Per-Slot Bidding?
Per slot bidding means that each slot is its own line item. Marketers get to see each slot individually, meaning they can bid on any or all of them.
The main advantage of per slot bidding is that for now, more marketers are set up to accept incoming per-slot bid requests.
Additionally, per-slot bidding can offer a more focused, granular view for DSPs that prefer bidding on a per-commercial basis, rather than a per-pod basis.
What Are the Advantages to Per-Pod Bidding?
As the name suggests, per-pod bidding means that marketers get to see the whole pod in the bid request. Why is this important?
Even though the pod is shared as a single request, publishers can still set individual floor prices for each slot within a pod, giving publishers more control over their revenue, and ensuring more fair pricing. After all, premium placements should come at a premium – not all slots are created equal. Plus, per pod bidding also offers greater cost-savings for SSPs and DSPs, because multiple slots can come through in a single request. Not to mention, significantly reducing queries per second (QSPs).
By seeing the whole pod, marketers gain more marketplace transparency. And, they get more control over ad placement within the pod.
Marketers also get a chance to bid on more than one slot per pod. This helps drive demand, while also giving marketers a better opportunity to get their creative in the pod, creating a win-win situation. As a result, per-pod bidding means better monetization opportunities for publishers and greater bidding efficiency for marketers.
At Smaato, we are fully per-pod enabled. Many DSPs are not yet equipped to handle incoming per-pod bid requests. But that means they’re missing out on some key benefits including better bidding efficiency and reduced QPS, not to mention cost savings. As adoption increases, we anticipate that per-pod bidding will quickly grow in popularity.
Ready to learn more about all things OTT?
Check out our complete guide: OTT/CTV Advertising eBook.
