What's the best way to create value in the programmatic supply path? Rubicon Project speaks with Infectious Media's Dan Larden about IM's approach to supply path optimisation.
"We thought that supply path optimisation meant cutting out all the hops in the supply chain. So how can we buy directly from the publisher and make sure that when we’re buying through an exchange, the most amount of money is going to the publisher. And then actually, after some analysis, what we realised is that isn’t always the best way of doing it. So there are some people in the media supply chain who are adding value. So it’s not all just, it’s not just solely about cutting out the middlemen and making sure we’re buying directly from publishers. It’s actually understanding the people that are in the supply chain and how they’re adding value.
A great example is company called Onscroll Sovereign. So they create viewable inventory that we otherwise wouldn’t have, and they are they are taking another hop, but they’re adding, ultimately, value in terms of viewable inventory. And there are other networks as well that have specific formats that otherwise we wouldn’t have access to. So when we started to do supply optimisation, and started to cut those guys out, we were losing some functionality ultimately.
So it’s really a case of just understanding who’s adding the value, cutting out the ones that are not, so the publisher gets the most amount of money, but making sure that we’re also work still working with those guys in the supply chain that are adding value. And that’s not easy to do, because you need to be constantly evaluating your supply chain and understanding exactly where your money’s going. Is it direct to publisher, is it through these intermediaries? And then it’s obviously different for different platforms as well in terms of the ability to actually have that data, to make those decisions, and then optimise it." Dan Larden, Managing partner Partnerships and Product, Infectious Media