When programmatic becomes problematic..

Pull the plug on programmatic resellers nibbling away at your ad revenue!

Did you know that some programmatic resellers buy inventory from publishers at a lower price and resell it at higher rates for a mark-up? This is often ad inventory that is undervalued or not properly priced.

Reseller practices like these, in addition to others lacking transparency, create unnecessary layers and fragmentation in the supply chain. This leads to inefficiencies in the programmatic marketplace and significantly minimizes the revenue publishers are able to generate from their CTV inventory.

Having said that, not all resellers exist in the programmatic media buying jungle solely to add inefficiencies and clutter; some are genuinely valuable in certain instances, such as securing ad buys for unaddressable and/or remnant inventory, or by offering inventory at lower price floors than direct, through a number of ways such as pre-existing relationships with publishers, aggregation and scale, grandfather clauses or content owner partnerships.

The above mentioned scenarios though, make up a very small percentage of programmatic reselling and for the most part it adds nothing but additional hops and layers to an already fragmented landscape.

This is why an increasing number of publishers and advertisers are slowly cutting off their reliance on programmatic resellers in favor of direct deals. By working more closely with fewer DSPs, publishers not only salvage their margins from unnecessary "fees" and hidden costs, but also ensure the best, most relevant ads for their audiences. For advertisers, direct deals offer more transparency in terms of where their ads will be placed and how much they will cost. This clarity helps in better campaign planning and evaluation.

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