Matchmakers aren’t just for lonely hearts – programmatic needs them too
Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger might want to consider moonlighting in martech.
Publisher-buyer matchmakers are good for programmatic, SpotX said.
And that’s a terrible joke because video inventory management platform SpotX said the continued growth of programmatic ad spend and the use of private marketplaces has given rise to a new industry skillset – the publisher-buyer matchmaking specialist.
SpotX said its Demand Facilitation team, which includes these very matchmakers who help create relationships between publishers and buyers and help structure deals, has seen net revenue increase by more than 200% over the last year as more relationships are structured through private marketplace and direct deals. In fact, these private marketplace deals account for about 45% of ad spend on SpotX’s platform – and that figure is expected to grow to over 50% in 2017.
SpotX said one of the factors driving the growth of private marketplaces has been the introduction of its Curated Marketplaces, which group inventory from multiple publishers, pre-filtered by specific themes such as viewability or audience attributes, to offer what it said is a more efficient yet scaled canvas for advertisers.
“Curated Marketplaces work by bundling multiple publisher connections into a single Deal ID for buyers – the feature helps remove the complexity of adding many PMP line items to a given campaign within a DSP,” SpotX said. “While providing a major operational efficiency for the buy side, each publisher still sees an independent Deal ID for each campaign in the platform, and can customize their deal terms and business rules on a deal by deal basis.”
In a statement, SpotX chief revenue officer Sean Buckley noted transitioning from traditional media executions to programmatic transactions is a major shift for publishers and buyers.
“As ad servers and SSPs continue to advance, and more publishers automate their video sales process, the role of people in programmatic remains as important as ever,” Buckley added. “Demand Facilitation specialists are currently among the fastest growing skill sets needed within our company. Platform customers can lean on the scaled and educated resources our company provides to help source private market demand, structure deals and set up their own Curated Marketplaces.”
Starcom and Media Assembly are two media agencies that have used SpotX's Curated Marketplaces.