Ten Things to Know About Private Marketplaces

Private Marketplaces are becoming such a phenomenon these days. Everyone wants them, not everyone knows what they are, and there are some hurdles in the process. So if you’re just getting started, what do you really need to know?

There are some great benefits:

Premium Content – you get a relationship with the publisher for a discounted rate. If you go direct, you must sign an IO and you will be locked in. A PMP allows you flexible access to premium high-end content.

PMPs allow you to be higher in the waterfall demand over Open Exchange. Typically in the demand waterfall, you fulfill the direct buys first, then PMPs, then Open Exchange. Which means that you get access to this inventory before it really hits all of the exchanges to the highest bidder (which sometimes is a higher rate than going the PMP route).

You can work with the publishers to create audience segments utilizing their first party data, which is often times much cheaper than utilizing 3rd party data within the DSPs.

There are also challenges that come with PMPs:

Initial Setup – Private Marketplaces take time, whether in the storefronts of Rubicon/AdX or on an email chain with the pubs.

Finding exactly what you’re looking for. For instance, if the client requests that you run on XYZ site, it may be hard to track down and locate a contact for XYZ contact to set up a PMP with.

Troubleshooting – they don’t always work seamlessly. You are the middleman coordinating the troubleshooting between the pub, SSP and DSP. Over time, this gets easier and you know what to do to prevent little things from happening again.

Helpful troubleshooting tips:

Utilize your DSP to help find contacts. If you’re looking for one particular site, and can’t find it through your resources, then reach out to your DSP point of contact and ask them. They may even have some other sites that could work better, or come out cheaper. Overall win.

Make sure the end dates are in the future and haven’t passed within the DSP and on the publisher’s end. This will cause the PMP to stop running. If you’re reusing a deal ID from the past, this is a more common error. Always reach out to your pubs to make sure they are ready to go!

Keep your publishers in the loop on their performance, and what you’re looking for exactly. Publishers want to be in the know on how they stack up against the rest of the campaign. If they are falling behind, let them know and chances are they can jump in, change some things, and get back on track.

If the PMP isn’t spending, check the creatives. Sometimes creatives get disapproved by the exchange which will stop the entire PMP from spending. This is always a good first step when troubleshooting before you reach out to everyone.

Private Marketplaces are a lot of work, but they provide great benefit to all types of campaigns. They require a good deal of talking, and a lot of manual setup, but the performance is almost always there. Work with the DSP, SSP, and Publisher to the best of your ability. They want to make everything work!