When it comes to deal curation, data is a differentiator.
Index Exchange knows this – hence why the SSP launched what it calls its Data Vendor Ecosystem on Tuesday. The idea is for the product to complement the Index Marketplaces curation offering.
So much of the recent shift from curating deals via DSP data markets to curating via SSPs instead has hinged on SSPs’ proximity to publisher data. SSPs are betting that their close relationships with publishers make them a more appealing place to conduct data sales, rather than upstream marketplace operators like The Trade Desk and LiveRamp. Which is why SSPs are building their own DSP-like data marketplaces with data from third-party brokers.
Through such a data vendor marketplace, curators gain access to third-party data sets without needing their own integrations, said Michael Richardson, Index Exchange’s VP of product for Marketplaces. Curators can pick data sources from a list of companies Index Exchange has already partnered with and activate them in deal IDs across any DSP.
Giving curators this control gives them more transparency into the data they’re using to build audiences, he added. Curators “can work more directly with those that are embracing sell side decisioning and create better media products across lots of different supply,” Richardson said.
Also, margin-scrapped SSPs are trying to undercut DSPs on data fees. Index Exchange, for one, doesn’t collect fees from its data marketplace, just its usual share of the media revenue that ultimately goes to publishers.
Preexisting data infrastructure
Through its Data Vendor Ecosystem, Index brings together “the whole gamut” of its data provider partners, Richardson said. This list includes Experian and the curation startup it acquired last year, Audigent, as well as Attain, Audience Town, DoubleVerify, Dstillery, illuma, IRIS.TV, LiveRamp Data Marketplace, Lumen, Mobian, Nano Interactive, Peer39, Proximic by Comscore, Samba TV and The Weather Company.
Marketplace customers – which includes curators, agencies and publishers that do their own curation – can “add in whatever segments or audiences they would like and package that up on the sell side,” Richardson said.
Previously, Richardson said, buyers were responsible for bringing new data vendors and audience segments to curate across publishers. Then curators in the middle would work with publishers to match advertiser graphs to publisher audiences. Now, everyone involved in curation can rely on Index’s partnerships across data brokers and publishers instead of their own connections.
For example, Experian has consumer data sourced from nearly 300 million individuals across 126 million households, said Greg Williams, SVP of partner success at Experian. Meanwhile, Audigent has data derived from publishers that integrate its Hadron ID, as well as insights from years of curating inventory across publishers.
Marketers who work directly with Experian and Audigent could have built a bespoke deal ID using both companies’ data, Williams said. But, through Index’s data marketplace, now any curator working with Index Exchange can use Experian and Audigent’s data, plus data from any of Index’s other partners as well.
This approach rounds out all of the different data sets curators use to package deals.
“If you’re a curator, and you have focused your curation only on media historically, you now have the ability to pick data off the shelf,” Williams said. “If you’re a data provider and you’re having trouble scaling with your own data set, you now have the ability to bring in other data sets.”
But having so many partners with vast data sets to match at speed and scale requires a platform with the infrastructure to handle it, Williams said.
Index is known for its focus on tech and infrastructure, he said. That emphasis lets Index stand out in terms of “how quickly they can amass a massive set of data partners to handle basically any of the tastes and preferences that buyers might have,” he said.
And the fact that Index is rolling out this offering now, Williams said, demonstrates that sell-side curation has become “a core part of the media plan” in programmatic.
Fee structure
But, arguably, the biggest differentiator for Index Exchange is its commitment to not collecting any deal curation fees for the use of its data marketplace.
Consider a buyer spending a $10 CPM for an audience curated through Index Exchange. If the DSP collects a $1 fee, and the curator collects a $1 fee, Index would collect its share of the remaining $8 headed toward the publisher.
In contrast, other SSPs collect a share of the curator’s fee, as well as a share of the publisher’s revenue. Williams guessed that there’s currently about a 50/50 split between SSPs that collect separate curation fees and those that don’t.
Meanwhile, DSPs typically apply their own fees whenever a data asset is used for curation through their platforms, he said.
In that sense, Index isn’t simply trying to move those curation fees from the DSP into its own platform, Richardson said. Instead, now curation vendors “can set their own margin and create relationships with marketplaces customers directly.”
Williams said Index’s commitment not to collect data and curation fees is more about standing out in a marketplace where take rates are often murky and buyers have concerns about how much of their spend is going toward working media, rather than tech middlemen.
“Whether you take a fee or not, I’m less concerned about,” he said. “What I applaud is their desire to put a line in the sand and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re not doing.’”
And, Williams said, it wouldn’t hurt if a little transparency on fees changed some problematic ad tech practices.
“It becomes a wakeup call,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with taking fees, but there is something wrong with taking fees when you don’t produce value.”
