(Part 2 of a 3 part series on Best Practices for Unified Pricing Rules) – Go to Part 1 or Part 3
This change actually has much deeper effects on Publisher yield management and monetization than any other feature change Google has introduced in the recent past. This blog series aims to guide you through the migration from Pricing to Unified Pricing Rules, and also help you keep control of your revenue after the transition.
We will publish the third article of the blog series soon. Meantime, you can directly download the complete white paper with the three articles by clicking below:
Adomik General Recommendations on Unified Pricing Rules Management
Generally speaking, UPR, as formerly with Pricing Rules, are the main tool to rely on in order to manage your yield. UPR thus have to be managed with a “floor philosophy” that does not really change.
Floor Management Philosophy
As a Publisher, you should use Unified Pricing Rules for 2 purposes:
- Adapt the pricing of your inventory based on its value (= leverage your strengths)
If you have an audience/ inventory that is highly attractive to some demand, make sure to reflect that in your prices. As an example, if your inventory delivers high value to “Automotive advertisers”, increase your prices specifically for them. This is really important in 1st Price Auction (1PA) because buyers will activate bid shading algorithms… or buyers will take advantage of low prices.
Still, always keep in mind that Open Auction is just one channel among others (PMPs, PGs, Direct IOs), so make sure to keep differentiated prices between OA (i.e. UPR) and other channels depending on the value / service that you offer to demand on each of these channels (as an example: do not increase your UPR prices above your preferred deals prices…). - Optimize yield: after the move to UPR, you should continue to optimize and fluctuate floors in UPR in order to generate the best revenue in OA, based on seasons, days of the week, active OA campaigns, bid shading, etc. In short, “traditional” yield management remains useful… but also more complicated because in 1PA the effect that floors have on revenue is less direct. Please refer to our 1PA white paper.
Having said that, it might be complicated for you to transition from existing Pricing Rules to UPR. Our simple recommendation is to start with a “translation” of those Pricing Rules into UPR.
Best Practices to Apply When Generating the 1st Set of Unified Pricing Rules
The obvious starting point for designing your 1st set of UPR is your existing Pricing Rules.
When Google migrates to 1PA, buyers will move from 2nd price to paying their bid value and Google will activate its own bid shading mechanism. The first weeks after the migration will probably be complicated for the buy side as a result. Buyers will probably “suffer” changes of CPM and margin, modifications of campaign allocation between SSPs, impacts on their SPO strategy… If on your side you decide to change all your floors, things will get even more complicated for them: changing the number of impressions they win, the performance of campaigns (CTR, conversions, etc.). This will create additional risks of “uncontrolled” reaction from buyers plus making it even more difficult for you to understand what is happening.
In short, our policy recommendation is to remain cautious & conservative at the start. The key recommendation is: try to stay close to your existing Pricing Rules floors.
So that when setting up your first UPR set, the question to consider is:
“How to translate my existing Pricing Rules into UPR”?
(Part 2 of a 3 part series on Best Practices for Unified Pricing Rules) – Go to Part 1 or Part 3