It wasn’t so long ago that Black Friday was a full-contact sport. Customers would fight (literally fight) for the privilege of making a purchase. It was all fair play – elbows, knees, teeth, anything to ensure that a given consumer got the absolute best prices on their preferred purchases.
The digital era of holiday shopping has relieved brick-and-mortar tensions to some degree, but before then, the retail holiday had more in common with Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls than with garden-variety commerce.
This is the equivalent of the open programmatic market. And if this sounds like an absolute nightmare, then you’ll love Private Marketplaces (PMPs), even if you know nothing about them.
This post is the first in an ongoing series on PMP education. By the end, you’ll not only understand how they work, but know how to make them work harder for you.
The Basics of Programmatic Inventory
PMPs are one of several channels that a given publisher will use to sell their inventory. Like a big-box store such as Walmart or Target, that inventory will run the gamut in price and quality.
Some placements might run on popular streaming services, websites, and programming, visible to a higher volume of desired consumers. Others might be priced lower, commensurate with the degree and quality of attention available.
In other words, inventory is not so different from retail selling. You have premium products at a premium price, mass-market purchases for budget-savvy shoppers, and everything in between.
The key difference is in how that inventory gets purchased.
How Publishers Sell Inventory
A given publisher’s inventory will be split into a few availability buckets.
Some are labeled as Publisher Guaranteed. Here, advertisers pay top dollar for reserved seating, such as it was. Think of this like securing a first-class ticket on a flight. Your place is guaranteed – and comes with a price tag to match.
Next on the list is Preferred Deals. This bucket represents any inventory that Publisher Guaranteed buyers didn’t purchase. While this inventory is technically “leftover,” it’s still high value and exceedingly premium.
It’s good to know about these channels, as they provide a useful reference for how PMPs operate.
PMPs: Under the Hood
Other inventory is reserved for PMPs. To be clear, this isn’t a waterfall system – it’s not that PMPs get the leftovers from Preferred Deals, which in turn get their leftovers from Publisher Guaranteed. There’s still plenty of high-quality placements and attention to be secured here, reserved by publishers from the get-go.
Think back to the Black Friday metaphor at the top of this blog. Imagine, in this scenario, if a select group of customers were invited into the store, separate from the rest of the crowd. This smaller group has access to quality inventory at a quality price before things go off the rails. This would be akin to a PMP.
Unlike with Publisher Guaranteed and Preferred Deals, advertisers will still bid against one another for ad placements. The difference is that bidding occurs among a smaller, select set of buyers.
Publishers and advertisers alike benefit from this system. The former can demand higher prices, while the latter gets the desired attention for their brands. Meanwhile, both sides can spare themselves the freneticism of navigating the open market (A.K.A. our figurative Black Friday scenario).
It’s a win-win.
Ready to Learn More?
Explore Infillion’s PMP offerings and see how private marketplace inventory can work for your brand. Learn more about Infillion PMPs
Have questions or want to talk through what’s right for your campaign? Get in touch.
This is part 1 of an ongoing series around PMP education. Next time, we’ll address and bust PMP Myths.
