It’s been well established that the inefficiencies brought on by the legacy “waterfall” have cost publishers significantly both monetarily and operationally. But even as new ad serving technologies have emerged to solve for these inadequacies, many publishers are still grappling with major challenges around outdated inventory allocation methodologies. PubMatic today released a white paper, entitled Decision Manager: Your Inventory. Your Rules., which outlines the key challenges and solutions in inventory management and monetization, and describes how publishers can leverage a technology platform to realize the full potential of their digital assets.
One notable hindrance behind efficient inventory allocation—called out in the paper—is a bid prioritization issue that arises from using Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Two products within DFP, Dynamic Allocation (DA) and Enhanced Dynamic Allocation (EDA) are typically implemented to increase the number of ad serving opportunities accessible through Google’s Ad Exchange (AdX) programmatic marketplace. However, DA and EDA often reprioritize demand to AdX, limiting the publisher’s ability to identify and solicit the highest possible bidder for each and every impression. What this means in lay man’s terms is that AdX gets a first look and last look on an ad impression, when EDA is enabled.
As a consequence, EDA reduces demand-side competition dramatically, potentially leading to lost revenue for publishers. In simple economic terms, a reduction in competition within a market leads to suboptimal levels of price and quantity. Beyond the issue of price optimization, EDA also diminishes transparency when it comes to bid decisioning.
With PubMatic’s Decision Manager, a leading header bidding solution, publishers can take back control of their inventory allocation in a holistic manner. After implementing a single header tag, the product allows publishers to integrate direct-sold inventory with all indirect inventory (across desktop and mobile web), which can increase average CPMs across the board for a publisher. Decision Manager also helps publishers strengthen relationships with their advertiser and agency partners by providing them access to larger pools of high-quality inventory that is often guaranteed and direct-sold.
The white paper addresses the challenges that publishers face in inventory management and demand sourcing, and how they can achieve maximum yield optimization. PubMatic’s Decision Manager is an important step towards achieving the holistic, cross-platform marketing automation platform of the future. For more information on Decision Manager please reach out to your PubMatic sales representative, or contact us here and someone will follow up.
