OpenX is courting advertisers extra aggressively with the launch of OpenXSelect, the newest evolution of its curation platform, which launched on Wednesday.
However don’t name OpenX an advert community, and positively don’t name it a demand-side platform.
Over the previous few years, sell-side curation has gained recognition as an answer for advertisers to focus on high-quality publishers. Provide-side platforms like OpenX are leaning into this pattern to show their worth as curators.
So … what’s new?
Just lately, there was a higher push for “management and transparency on the purchase facet,” OpenX CRO Matt Sattel informed AdExchanger.
Ever for the reason that Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers put out a report in 2023 concerning the price inefficiencies of programmatic shopping for and the problems inherent throughout made-for-advertising websites, Sattel stated, manufacturers have been having “deeper conversations round provide high quality” and the danger of not figuring out the place their advertisements are working.
Promote-side curation is the answer, he stated.
OpenX’s information science staff makes use of the corporate’s curation-focused AI suite, Outcomes by OpenX, to foretell how probably advertisements are to drive particular outcomes primarily based on sure attributes, together with time of day and site, stated Sattel. Outcomes by OpenX launched in Might and can be accessible inside OpenXSelect.
The data is sourced from information suppliers and OpenX’s bidstream.
“What our information suppliers are capable of do,” stated Sattel, “is match their audiences by way of our proprietary id graph and make them accessible for patrons to activate inside the OpenXSelect platform.”
From there, patrons can get granular with the main points, constructing packages round a particular matter, like sports activities, so advertisers should purchase advert stock that appeals to their particular viewers. Advertisers may goal particular person publishers, quite than a bigger section.
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They will curate their provide with choices for contextual focusing on, particular audiences or eco-friendly publishers. OpenX then turns the chosen provide right into a deal ID to focus on related publishers.
Two’s firm
What it means to be an SSP has developed quickly over the previous few years. Relatively than focusing solely on promoting advert area on behalf of publishers, they’ve not too long ago doubled down on buy-side instruments. Now, SSPs face the problem of balancing the wants of advertisers with these of publishers.
As an alternative of redefining what it means to be an SSP, some corporations are redefining themselves. PubMatic, for instance, insists that it’s not an SSP (okay) and as an alternative calls itself an “end-to-end platform” – which can be a fancy manner of claiming it serves each patrons and sellers.
Nevertheless, OpenX is staunchly set in its id as an SSP, stated Sattel, simply with a higher concentrate on buy-side transparency and management. And “there’s not far more a purchaser goes to need than transparency, efficiency and scale,” he stated.
However now that SSPs are homing in on the buy-side expertise, it raises the query of what position DSPs play within the digital promoting ecosystem. Based on Sattel, DSPs don’t want to fret; they aren’t going wherever.
Whereas SSPs are adopting options historically supplied by DSPs, like focusing on and curation, this up to date strategy really enhances DSPs, stated Sattel.
DSPs usually obtain extra alerts from SSPs than they will reply to, he stated, and duplicate requests improve the danger that high-performing stock can be missed by patrons as a result of a DSP’s queries-per-second caps.
OpenXSelect focuses on “sending the suitable requests and the suitable alerts to DSPs,” stated Sattel. This successfully signifies that advertisers can goal their most related content material whereas DSPs obtain a smaller, extra curated quantity of alerts.
And so, for now, a minimum of, patrons are nonetheless utilizing DSPs, stated Sattel, and “with the intention to make a purchaser profitable, now we have to make the DSP profitable as effectively.”
“I consider in a two-sided market,” he stated, to supply checks and balances on each side concerning pricing and stock. Which means each DSPs and SSPs nonetheless have outlined roles to play.
In any other case, Sattel stated, advert tech runs the danger of returning to the black-box advert community mannequin that “programmatic was constructed to unravel for.”
