Private marketplace (PMP) adoption continued to increase in 2015, and there are no signs of it slowing down. eMarketer estimates that PMP spending will reach $3.65 billion this year and grow 35% to a projected $4.93 billion by 2017. These gains are driven, in part, by the premium prices that PMP inventory garner. PubMatic’s Q3 2015 Quarterly Mobile Index Report found that PMP CPMs are higher than non-PMP CPMs, by a factor of 5-6x for mobile PMP and 3-4x for desktop PMP.
Publishers are embracing PMPs as a means to gain more control over which advertisers run on their premium inventory in the programmatic space. Buyers are interested in PMP as it allows them to better reach their target audience through a publisher they trust, with the benefit of access to premium inventory that might not otherwise be available in the open market.
While PMPs will likely continue to be an effective programmatic solution in 2016 for publishers and buyers alike, they present some challenges. For publishers, issues like finding the right buyers, setting pricing and troubleshooting can create barriers to successful PMP implementation. However, with the right data and actionable information, these challenges can be overcome. The following are a few suggested strategies for publishers to address these issues by leveraging PMP analytics.
Identify Buyers
Without the right tools, publishers may waste valuable time negotiating with buyers who are not interested or not the right fit. PubMatic’s industry-first benchmarking service, part of PubMatic’s Analytics Premium package, finds buyers that are spending via PMP with a publisher’s competitive peers, but are not spending PMP dollars with them—representing an opportunity to sell. Benchmarking helps publishers identify buyers that are spending in the open exchange and are a strong fit to approach for a PMP deal, which will likely lead to increased spend.
Optimize Pricing
Publishers are trying to attract and build relationships with PMP buyers while also wanting to maximize the value of their inventory. Unfortunately, many publishers don’t know the value of their inventory in a broader market context, nor do they use the tools to anticipate how they can respond to shifts in buyer behavior. These publishers are negotiating PMP deals without competitive market pricing information, which results in missed opportunities and lost revenue.
PubMatic’s benchmarking service enables publishers to assess if their eCPM is higher or lower than competitive peer publishers. Benchmarking also provides insight on competitive performance of PMP transaction volume and overall revenue for specific buyers. This insight helps publishers negotiate pricing with buyers, which results in increased revenue.
Monitor Performance
In the process of launching and running a PMP deal, there are issues that can impact performance, including complications with deal activation, bid requests not being sent and blocking of specific advertisers. Publishers need tools to protect revenue and make sure PMP deals are performing as expected, even when not logged in.
Custom Alerts, part of the Analytics Premium package, sends publishers proactive notifications so they can take immediate action on new revenue opportunities and protect current revenue. The alerts can use any metric available in the PubMatic Analytics platform, across various dimensions. For PMPs, publishers can track performance of specific deals and receive email alerts. So, for example, a publisher could receive an email if there was a considerable amount of lost bids in a PMP deal due to a specific advertiser blocking ads. The publisher could then take action on this insight and resolve that issue.
PubMatic’s Analytics Premium package includes the industry’s first feature that provides publishers with real-time insight for individual PMP deals, which helps to ensure deals are performing as expected. Other PMP reports available within PubMatic Analytics such as the Deal Health Report provides details on bids received, lost bids, bid win rate, fill rate and more.
PMPs are a great way for publishers to drive revenue and build long-term relationships with buyers. For more information on how PubMatic Analytics can help your PMP initiatives in 2016, please reach out to your sales representative, or contact us here.
