Advertisers and agencies want more direct ways to purchase premium inventory as supply path optimisation (SPO), brand safety and transparency issues continue to be a concern, according to new research.
The first Programmatic Insights study from BidSwitch, a wholly owned subsidiary of IPONWEB and global provider of programmatic infrastructure – also finds that media spend on inventory sold direct using ads.txt, the IAB programmatic advertising transparency initiative, increased 45% in Q4 2019 compared to the equivalent period in 2018, while spend on reseller and unauthorised supply decreased.
The preference for direct ads.txt buyer paths is a key finding of the first Programmatic Insights study from BidSwitch, a wholly owned subsidiary of IPONWEB and global provider of programmatic infrastructure. The research compared aggregated data from 2018 and 2019 (with a focus on Q4 for each year) to understand how the programmatic industry is changing.
The increased focus on transparency, along with privacy regulation, also saw media buyers willing to pay a premium for direct transactions with publishers, demonstrated by higher revenue figures for media trading undertaken via marketplaces. Deals in private marketplaces saw eCPMs (effective cost per thousand) that were 3.2 times higher than inventory sold across the open exchange; public deals were 1.7 higher.
In addition, ad impressions that are not matched through cookies were found to have eCPMs that were a third of those that use cookie syncing. This potentially makes them a cost-effective route to buying premium inventory (and may indicate future CPMs if workable alternatives to the -third-party cookie are not found before Chrome’s deprecation).
BidSwitch’s platform-neutral programmatic ‘pipes’ connect supply and demand technology partners around the world. This enables it to analyse almost 50 trillion anonymous user ad requests every quarter, putting the company in a unique position to see the macro trends impacting programmatic advertising across display, mobile, native, video, TV and digital out-of-home (DOOH).
Other findings of the BidSwitch study include:
• Emerging channels are being adopted as ‘traditional’ media moves to programmatic. Bid requests for DOOH inventory grew 107% between 2018 and 2019, connected TV was up 39% and audio increased 16%.
• Native advertising is increasingly strong. Bid requests for native ad spots grew 70% during 2019, compared to the 7.5% increase seen by display (although CPMs for each category are similar).
• First price auctions accounted for almost half (48.25%) of media spend in 2019, compared to second price, representing a 181% year-on-year growth.
• Header bidding spend grew 54% globally in Q4 2019 and eCPMs were up 18%.
Barry Adams, general manager at BidSwitch, says: “With unique visibility of programmatic media trading activity, BidSwitch can provide an informed snapshot of the industry. The drive to optimise the supply path, comply with privacy regulation, and improve brand safety and transparency promotes the value of direct transactions with publishers as well as the ads.txt initiative. In addition, cost-effective ways to secure premium inventory is valuable knowledge for ad buyers as the world moves away from third party cookies.”
Programmatic Insights: 2019 is available to download here.
Source: www.bidswitch.com
www.iponweb.com
