supply path optimization

The deal is the latest sign that media buyers are moving closer to publishers to shorten supply paths and get at the audience data they need to train AI agents.

Agencies are differentiating their tech stacks by building custom agentic AI tools for their clients. And they’re rethinking owning those AI tools – particularly since licensing them creates new revenue streams.

Locality SVP Tom Wolfe explains why supply path optimization (SPO) must prioritize data fidelity, local TV fragmentation, and true value over fee-cutting.

AI can help make media buying more efficient. But it’ll take some more time before AI agents are a seamless part of the modern media buying process, says Goodway Group’s Andrea Kwiatek, director of strategic partnerships.

Two-thirds of consumer attention lives on the open internet, but only one-fifth of ad spend follows it there. That gap is no accident. Walled gardens spent the past decade creating it.

Atria’s collective approach is a response to growing monetization challenges and the need to protect the value of human journalism in the AI era.

If AI-powered sales agents are the future, the instinct is simple: more agents should mean more revenue. But isn’t this the same logic that drove SSP proliferation over the last decade?

Goodway Group has reduced the number of SSPs it works with from about 20 at the end of 2024 to just single digits today.

With deterministic data like cookies becoming less reliable, advertising’s real value comes from being able to predict where audiences will be and how and when to reach them.

Amazon Publisher Services released a host of tools, such as Signal IQ, to help publishers see which bidstream signals drive demand. Pinpointing which signals drive higher revenue is key for publishers.

Meta wants to own online communities; Ecommerce brands face old-school advertising scrutiny; Omnicom wants fewer ad tech middlemen.

As connected TV (CTV) matures, advertisers aren’t just raising expectations; they’re resetting them. And increasingly, transparency isn’t a value-add, it’s the cost of entry.

Supply-path optimization may not be the trendiest three-letter acronym in ad tech anymore, but the SPO trend is still playing out – especially in the CTV category.

Publisher comment sections remain an untapped source of intent-based data, according to Kelly Andresen, who recently left USA Today to head up comment monetization platform OpenWeb’s direct sales efforts.

GAM’s dinner with ad agencies sparked speculation that Google is preparing to spin off its bundled SSP and ad server as a remedy to its ad tech monopoly. But Google says it’s just part of the trend of SSPs going direct to buyers.

Curated deals were once seen as a smart way to bring structure to programmatic chaos. Today, they’ve become table stakes.

Former Goodway Group CEO Jay Friedman shares hot takes on everything from curation (“absurd”) to brand safety (“botched”).

On Tuesday, mobile video ad platform LoopMe bought mobile monetization platform Chartboost from mobile game publisher Zynga. That’s a lot of mobile. But with more scale and direct connections to app publishers, said LoopMe CEO Stephen Upstone, “more brand dollars are going to move into the app environment.”

Equativ (formerly known as Smart AdServer) announced its acquisition of Sharethrough, an SSP with a specialty in native advertising.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Path Less Traveled We all know what supply-path optimization (SPO) means and why it’s useful. Except, wait, what does SPO mean? “‘SPO’ – perhaps already a bigger buzzword than MFA. Every definition of SPO is different,” tweets Jud Spencer, engineering leader at The […]

Buyers could solve many of the issues they have with the open web by focusing less on viewability and clicks and more on driving performance outcomes, says Goodway Group director of strategic partnerships Andrea Kwiatek.

Programmers are using their Q1 earnings reports as a dress rehearsal for their upfront pitches. Meanwhile, programmatic platforms, including Magnite and PubMatic, also had upfronts in mind during their Q1 earnings.

For Magnite, the biggest growth opportunity lies in supply-path optimization. The trade-off is the pressure to differentiate itself from other supply-side platforms competing for agency deals.

PubMatic has its supply-path optimization initiative, its strategy to introduce direct deals for CTV and online video, to thank for its quarterly revenue growth.

The IAB projects digital video ad spend will rise to $63 billion in 2024, representing a 16% increase from last year. Of the three video ad categories the report breaks out (social and online video and CTV), the clear winner is social video.

In recent years, Vizio has undergone a metamorphosis, transitioning from a hardware company to primarily a connected TV ad platform. Now, its biggest growth opportunities lie in programmatic ad sales and home screen monetization to sell more supply.

TV inventory shrinks as supply paths proliferate. To help organize the chaos, video ad server Innovid launched a new SPO product called Harmony Direct to give media buyers the shortest path possible to CTV ad supply.

On Thursday, TEGNA-owned CTV ad platform Premion announced the acquisition of Octillion Media, a DSP launched in 2019 to serve local CTV ad buyers. Premion declined to disclose the terms of the deal.

Since advertisers now treat connected TV more like a digital performance channel, expect programmatic CTV demand to keep ramping up – including in the open exchange.

In 2023, supply-path optimization took off, brands took their scalpels to made-for-advertising websites and DSPs and SSPs launched SPO products to cut down on hops. Plus: lessons from the year in data privacy.