Centro Institute: Private Marketplaces Q&A

We received a lot of questions during our February Centro Institute webinar on private marketplaces. Because we wanted to keep this bite-sized PMP presentation under 45 minutes, we weren’t able to answer all of them, so we’ve enlisted our fearless speaker, Christine Kim, to answer questions on our blog:

Generally speaking, how do CPMs for private marketplaces compare to the open marketplace?
CPMs for PMPs do tend to be higher than the open marketplace. That’s because you’re getting more premium inventory with a PMP, and you already know the floor rate and where you need to start bidding for a chance to win inventory.

In the eyes of a programmatic buyer, will the adoption of ads.txt undermine the value of PMPs relative to the open exchange?
No, because ads.text does not impact how PMPs are bought for a buyer. Publishers will still set aside different types of inventory for PMPs – like first-party deals or special packages for high viewability or access to sections of their site that buyers may not be able to get in the open marketplace.

Today, ads.txt mostly impacts publishers and exchanges that show which inventory is being sold to an authorized re-seller. Why? Because, even though this wasn’t the original intent of PMPs, advertisers often used PMPs to ensure they were buying from an actual publisher. If you think of it in that way, ads.text makes PMPs redundant.

Does Basis have more than just web display inventory?
Yes, Basis has a lot of other inventory other than web display. We have a filter function within Basis where you can search by format – either display advertising or video – and you can search by device types. The device types available are desktop, phone, tablet, and connected TV. You can also filter by inventory type such as desktop web, mobile web, and mobile app.

Why not do a direct buy instead of a PMP buy?
You can do a direct buy if you want! It just depends on the strategy you are looking to implement for your client. We talked a bit about private marketplaces vs. direct buys on our blog earlier this month.

What is the difference between a PMP and an allowed list?
An Allowed list is considered a different tactic than a PMP. An allowed list is when a buyer will identify sites that have historically performed well and use those for either the same campaign or future campaigns.

You can select an allowed list tactic and apply that in the open marketplace. However, with a PMP, that inventory would not be coming from the open marketplace.

You mentioned geographic weather-based targeting. How does that work with PMPs?
Geographic weather trigger targeting is when ads are served based on the weather in the area you are targeting. These type of PMPs are provided by The Weather Company and AccuWeather. Because you cannot predict the weather, it’s often recommended this type of buy is also coupled with another tactic to help drive scale for your campaign.

Are there any additional landing page best practices that would be required with a private marketplace campaign? Do audiences have any special expectations when they are served ads on these channels?
How an ad is served and the experience a user has on the ad’s landing page are independent from one another. Audiences don’t know how ads are bought and wouldn’t be able to tell if an ad came from a PMP buy, so they do not have any special expectations when it comes to ads from PMP buys. So, there are no additional requirements that need to be made on a landing page. 

Can you further explain the difference between programmatic guaranteed inventory and PMPs? Any particular preference for which is better or worse?
Sure! That main difference is that programmatic guaranteed offers guaranteed inventory – and PMPs do not. With a programmatic guaranteed buy, buyers agree beforehand that they will spend a certain amount.

With PMPs, you’re still operating in a RTB environment and you still have to bid against other buyers to win the inventory. And if you bid too low, you run the risk of not winning the inventory.

Is it possible to buy only viewable impressions with niche first- and third-party data targeting?
Basis has deals with viewability as high as 90%. However, combining that with first- and third-party data targeting is not recommended, because this will highly limit the scale of your campaign.

In terms of scalability, if I have an audience of 20,000 targets, does a PMP buy make sense?
It would depend on a number of factors, including your campaign geo, budget, flight dates, and creative, to name a few.

These all play a role in determining whether your campaign will be able to scale with a PMP. For example, if your geo is bigger and your flight date is longer, the possibility of that campaign delivering is higher.

For Latin America, do you have PMPs for TV?
We have Connected TV PMPs available for Latin America that were just implemented through Spot X.

For additional info on specific opportunities, Centro capabilities, or questions unanswered, please reach out to your Centro Account Lead.

Learn more about Programmatic Advertising with Centro.