By Allen Baum, SVP Platform Sales
For most platforms, more is a good thing. More inventory, more partners, more revenue; these are high on anyone’s wish list. But what some might not realize is that a larger footprint inevitably comes with greater risk. After all, SSPs and DSPs — the platforms that connect publishers and advertisers — are in the business of trust. Any new supply source they bring on is a potential liability if its inventory doesn’t align with buyer standards.
To address this, platforms need a reliable and scalable way to screen new inventory sources before issues arise. Unfortunately for most platforms, that can be easier said than done. Some employ basic and underpowered solutions while others rely on a slow and costly manual approach. Some platforms may not have a vetting process at all. DV Marketplace Suite’s latest solution, Supply Lens, gives platforms a simple but superior answer to all three of these scenarios. Let’s talk about why and how.
Effective vetting is hard to come by for many platforms, primarily because they rely on slow and expensive manual processes. That’s not to say that a resourceful team can’t handle its own vetting. But with the amount of work that goes into effective and ongoing protection, it’s tough to justify the investment.
One of the main problems with manual solutions is that they are inherently difficult to scale. In order to realize the level of expansion that most platforms want, there must be some level of automation involved along the way. The value of automation goes beyond speed; it’s also time. Your team gets hours back to focus on more impactful and growth-oriented work.
Of course, the problems aren’t entirely internal. Platforms routinely work with suppliers who provide inaccurate or incomplete quality data. Metrics like fraud and invalid traffic (IVT) rates, viewability and brand suitability are non-negotiables for advertisers and agencies. Without this vital information, teams are forced to work through blind spots and rely on intuition when they should be able to trust their data.
The most glaring difficulty for human review is that it’s…well, human. Mistakes can happen more frequently, and they can often lead to a number of short and long-term setbacks for buyers and their campaigns.
When low-quality inventory slips into a platform’s footprint, the damage can compound quickly. Underperformance, suitability violations, and costly makegoods can take a toll on platform revenue and negatively impact partnerships. But there is a significant operational cost as well. Teams that work under these conditions can only react to problems after they occur, and by then, the damage is already done.
That’s the problem, but what does a solution look like? Ideally, it would be one that allows platforms to use impartial quality data to proactively make their own onboarding and offboarding decisions. That is exactly what DV Supply Lens is designed to do.
DV Supply Lens offers marketplaces an easy and comprehensive way to assess new supply sources before taking on their inventory. From a single dashboard in DV Marketplace Suite, platforms now have instant access to DV’s independent quality data, including aggregated fraud and IVT rates, brand suitability, viewability and made-for-advertising (MFA) risk. Platforms can view results at a glance at a domain, bundle (for in-app inventory) and seller level.
Most importantly, the data provided by DV Supply Lens gives real decision-making power to platforms when they need it most; before they commit to new inventory, not after. Combined with the rest of DV Marketplace Suite’s established solutions, platforms are now better equipped than ever to meet the challenges of growth and demand while still delivering the results that their buyers expect of them. That’s what giving power to the platforms is all about.
Contact a DV representative to learn more about Supply Lens and DV Marketplace Suite!