PART 3 OF THE “HOW TO FIX PRIVATE MARKETPLACES” SERIES
- Part 1: What’s wrong with Private Marketplaces (PMP)?
- Part 2: The top 5 (pre-deal) keys to getting Private Marketplaces right.
- Part 3: The two post-launch activities that will insure your private marketplaces work
As we noted in post 2 of this series, once you have selected the correct deal structure, identified inventory, and established pricing, you are ready to launch your private deal (PMP). However, what you do after launch is key to making sure the deal has a chance of realizing its potential — and turning into a lucrative long-term relationship.
Often overlooked due to their perceived dull nature, monitoring and troubleshooting are often the difference-makers in successful private deals. Most programmatic yield managers and CROs are generally on to finding the next deal after a deal is launched, and as a result, they end up with private deals that end up disappointing both the buy and sell sides.
To insure the longevity of your private deals, pay attention to the boring stuff, specifically, Troubleshooting and Monitoring.
Troubleshooting to ensure delivery
Once a PMP is live, both seller and buyer should make sure that the setup and targeting have been correctly implemented. Here are a few major KPIs to keep an eye on:
- The buyer’s win rate for private auction PMPs – and the reasons why it does not reach 100%
- The volume of impressions made available
- The validity of creatives used by the demand partner
Additionally, as part of your monitoring routines, you’ll need to keep an eye out for performance signals that help you flag technology problems resulting from cross-system integration (DSP to SSP). These issues can cost you both volume and eat into your profitability as you spend resources to fix them.
Monitoring to ensure performance:
When defining the private deal scope, both parties should agree on a soft commitment in terms of available volume (by format, geo, cookie frequency, etc) on the sell-side and of expected spend on the buy-side. These terms should then be monitored on a regular basis to make sure the PMP is profitable for both sides. Additionally, these benchmarks will be used to help you assess if you have other issues contributing to lackluster performance and a reason to proactively engage in dialogue to get on track.
While not glamorous, the rigorous operations and administration of PMP deals are often the difference between the successful and lackluster private deal.
A quick word on Deal Discovery…
Any conversation about effective PMPs would be incomplete without discussing supply-side deal discovery. Even though a lot of (most?) deals are initiated from buy-side inquiries, media sellers should also proactively initiate discussions and negotiations when they detect an interest shown by a specific demand partner. If sellers have systems in place to rapidly discover such interest deep in the trading data, they can become proactive with buyers in suggesting deals, complete with pricing. Ironically, publishers often have deeper optics on what buyers are buying than buyers do. Because of this, the Adomik platform offers buyer portals that sellers can provision to buyers and a deal discovery mechanism inside Adomik Deal Maker (along with our deal analytics, pricing and monitoring). Obviously, as publishers continue to gain command of their trading data, discovering and ranking PMP opportunities on a daily basis will make a large contribution to maximizing overall revenue.