Why Ad Tech Shouldn't Be Skittish About Supply Path Optimization

This little understood metric is what's driving a lot of major players' big decisions

Supply path optimization, better known as SPO, might seem like another buzzy tech phrase looped into the programmatic landscape, but it’s one of the industry’s most effective ways to cut the clutter between media buyers and publishers hungry to sell their inventory.

Though different players in the ad-tech ecosystem need different approaches, the general idea is the same: getting the best price with the least amount of manpower.

Before header bidding gained steam in 2017, Adam Soroca, who heads Rubicon Project’s global buyer team, said that roughly each programmatic exchange represented a different supply route, and competed against each other based on their “queries per second.”

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This story first appeared in the May 6, 2019, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.