Is Premium Direct Supply the Answer to Making Programmatic Less Complicated? 

Increase efficiencies and maximize performance

Programmatic has given buyers and sellers tools to connect and interact in new ways. However, it doesn’t come without its faults. The industry is 10-plus years into programmatic and it still feels like marketers are searching for ways to make programmatic as efficient as possible.

There are still questions around figuring out the right way to reach the consumer, understanding the value and fees that come along with programmatic and finally, the impact programmatic has on the environment and a company’s role in minimizing its carbon footprint.

Enter premium direct supply. The way programmatic is right now, the industry is in a position where pricing is determined by the market. While competition is good, publishers need the tools to price their own inventory.

Premium direct supply meets three key criteria that helps publishers increase efficiencies and maximize performance: It allows publishers to set their own prices, create a more transparent market and ultimately better understand how to reach the end user.

The benefits of premium direct supply

Premium supply creates an abundance of benefits for the industry, such as allowing for direct supply chains with no unnecessary intermediaries and zero hop data application. Additionally, it creates a user-first advertising experience that pairs high-impact placements with original content and has resulted in proven business outcomes for performance marketers.

When it comes to programmatic supply paths, bigger is not always better and multi-hop intermediaries can complicate media investment. Buying direct makes it easy for media buyers to activate high performance, premium inventory at scale. Buyers can integrate data directly on the supply and have accurate preflight inventory and scale forecasting. This ensures budgets are being spent appropriately and will drive a better ROI.

Additionally, buying direct helps publishers have more control over the quality of inventory they are buying. It increases transparency and allows for media buyers to know every publisher on their media plan.

While the complexity of the programmatic supply chain puts responsible media buying out of reach for most brands, buying direct can help every marketer in every demand-side platform (DSP) to buy the best of the web.

Keep the momentum going

In 2019, EMX by Big Village completely rebuilt all of its technology in an effort to provide a more agile and simplified tech stack, built for the future. The team took a critical look at the typical ad stack, slicing out unnecessary pieces and innovating to bring data points closer to in-flight requests.

According to Jounce Media, 44% of the auctions available to DSP buyers lead to multi-hop supply chains that carry unnecessary fees. Among the remaining 56% of auctions, most lead to low quality ad placements that have no demonstrable effect on consumer behavior.

Responsible media buyers should know and trust every publisher on their media plans. But the complexity of the programmatic supply chain puts responsible media buying out of reach for most brands. Its supply composition over-indexes 184% for Jounce-certified web publishers vs. other ad exchanges. But through its integration with Jounce Media, EMX makes this premium supply available to any marketer in any DSP.

EMX by Big Village is committed to keeping the momentum going. And other companies within the industry can do the same. It won’t be easy—rebuilding tech stacks takes time, money and resources that can often be difficult to come by. However, modernizing tech stacks in the industry comes with benefits that outweigh any challenges marketers might face. Benefits include greater transparency, the ability to customize deal structures on top of a simpler and more efficient tech stack built for the future—providing greener and more environmentally conscious options for the industry.

Doing good for your business is good for everyone. When media buyers choose efficient, direct supply paths that companies like EMX provide, they not only achieve better media results, they have the opportunity to make a positive impact, taking a step forward to reduce tech’s carbon footprint. It’s a win for advertising and it’s a win for the greater good.

Michael Zacharski is the CEO of EMX by Big Village, a leading end-to-end programmatic technology group focused on the planning, buying and measurement of CTV and omnichannel media. EMX is the fully owned technology that powers Big Village’s programmatic media business.