BiddingStack says publishers control the path buyers rank
BiddingStack published a guide for publishers on Supply Path Optimization (SPO), outlining strategies to improve ad revenue and supply chain transparency. The guide covers topics such as maintaining ads.txt, optimizing SSP relationships, managing traffic quality, and leveraging first-party data to gain a better share of advertiser spend. It emphasizes that publishers can control factors like authorization hygiene, auction duplication, and traffic quality, which influence how buyers rank their supply chains.
Key Takeaways
- ISBA/PwC data cited in the guide shows publishers’ average share of advertiser spend rose from 51% in 2020 to 57% in 2023.
- Unmatched spend fell from 15% in 2020 to about 3% in open marketplaces and under 1% in private marketplace deals by 2023.
- The guide says most publishers have 3 to 5 SSPs carrying 80% or more of programmatic revenue, with the rest of the stack in the long tail.
- BiddingStack recommends quarterly ads.txt audits, plus seller ID checks against each SSP’s sellers.json record.
- The article says PPID coverage of 25% of sessions looks materially different from 2% in buyer data, especially for matched CRM and frequency capping.
Why It Matters
The immediate message is that publisher-side SPO is not just a buyer-side cleanup exercise; ads.txt hygiene, SSP consolidation, traffic quality, and first-party IDs all affect whether bids reach the publisher at all. The competitive angle is clear in the guide: buyers are already ranking supply chains, and publishers with three clean SSP paths can look very different from those exposed through a dozen routes. The next signal to watch is whether publishers can move more spend into the three-to-five SSP core while reducing auction duplication and unauthorized reseller activity.
Read full article at biddingstack.com