REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 29, 2021 – PubMatic, Inc. (Nasdaq: PUBM), a sell-side platform that delivers superior outcomes for digital advertising, today announced that BT, a multinational telecommunications company, and Essence, a data and measurement-driven agency which is part of GroupM, have successfully employed a buyer-controlled fee structure to gain control and transparency of all programmatic inventory bought via PubMatic. GroupM has recently appointed PubMatic as a preferred global SSP partner.
The partnership between BT, Essence, and PubMatic has given BT better visibility into how much of its total media spend reaches end publishers and helped them to investigate the ‘unknown delta’ (as the ISBA calls it in their recent ISBA / PwC study of the programmatic supply chain) – the lost or unaccounted-for ad spend between advertisers and publishers during a programmatic auction. PubMatic’s buyer-controlled fee structure provides Essence and BT with a fixed take rate that enables them to precisely quantify SSP fees. This control, consistency, and predictability of fees across the supply chain resulted in a 7% increase in win rate and a 5% increase in bid rate, showing the commercial efficiency of a buyer-controlled commercial model.
“BT has taken a proactive involvement driving greater display supply path transparency for several years, and following the ISBA PwC study narrowed down a further set of tests we could run”, said Alison Thorburn, Media Digital Accelerator, BT Group. “Working with PubMatic via Essence on the fixed take rate model has given us a positive step forward improving results and transparency”.
The traditional supply-side platform (SSP) fee model makes it challenging for agencies and advertisers to understand what percentage of the media dollar reaches the publisher, since SSPs have differing contractual fees or ‘take rates’ with each publisher. For media agencies, this means that take rates are constantly fluctuating due to the variety of publishers being bought programmatically in the open auction in any given minute, hour, or day.
“The PWC/ISBA study results underscored the need to increase transparency in the programmatic supply chain”, said Matthew McIntyre, Head of Programmatic EMEA at Essence, who led Essence’s participation in the ISBA/PWC study. “It was great to partner with PubMatic to identify new solutions to help advertisers see exactly where and how their money is being spent across the full buying path”.
“We are excited that Essence have partnered with PubMatic to help them achieve a more transparent supply chain for BT. We expected the consistent fee structure would not impact campaign metrics, but were pleased to see an increase in performance as it shows our transparency products benefit the whole ecosystem, while also driving performance”, said Francesca Warne, Associate Director, Advertiser Solutions EMEA at PubMatic.
ENDS
About BT
BT Group is the UK’s leading telecommunications and network provider and a leading provider of global communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities in the UK include the provision of fixed voice, mobile, broadband and TV (including Sport) and a range of products and services over converged fixed and mobile networks to consumer, business and public sector customers. For its global customers, BT provides managed services, security and network and IT infrastructure services to support their operations all over the world. BT consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Openreach, which provides access network services to over 650 communications provider customers who sell phone, broadband and Ethernet services to homes and businesses across the UK.
British Telecommunications plc is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
About Essence
Essence, part of GroupM, is a global data and measurement-driven media agency whose mission is to make brands more valuable to the world. Clients include Google, Flipkart, NBCUniversal, L’Oreal, and the Financial Times. The agency is 2,000 people strong, manages US$4.5B in annualized media spend, and deploys campaigns in 121 markets via 22 offices in APAC, EMEA and the Americas.
About PubMatic
PubMatic, Inc. (Nasdaq: PUBM) delivers superior revenue to publishers by being a sell-side platform of choice for agencies and advertisers. The PubMatic platform empowers independent app developers and publishers to maximize their digital advertising monetization while enabling advertisers to increase ROI by reaching and engaging their target audiences in brand-safe, premium environments across ad formats and devices. Since 2006, PubMatic has created an efficient, global infrastructure and remains at the forefront of programmatic innovation. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, PubMatic operates 14 offices and eight data centers worldwide.