Programmatic advertising, since its introduction to digital advertising, has been extremely advantageous to digital marketers. If you ask a modern-day marketer to name an advertising tool that increases time efficiency, eliminates human error, is flexible and fairly commitment-free, and allows media buyers to shift budgets faster than ever before, the answer will often be programmatic advertising. In 2023, an estimated 75% of digital display ads were served programmatically.
Programmatic advertising is an automated, real-time buying and selling process that lets marketers target specific audiences and optimise campaigns for superior, scalable results. The programmatic supply path is made up of a number of intermediaries that connect buyers (advertisers) to sellers (publishers). Each supply path consists of sell-side platforms (SSPs), which are intermediaries that compete for the advertising demand within the programmatic auctions and publishers that house the inventory that advertisers buy.
Addressing Trust & Transparency in Programmatic
Despite the numerous advantages of Programmatic, trust and transparency challenges continue to trouble marketers because of the multiple parties that sit between the advertiser and the consumer. Without transparency and insight into the complexity of the supply chain, marketers are forced to make supply path decisions on cost alone, which compromises the quality of impressions being served. This leads to marketers buying low-quality media and wasting valuable ad spend.
According to an Integral Ad Science (IAS) report, more than nine-in-10 media experts say that quality spent by SSP is important for evaluating supply paths, and another 69% list quality and cost as top considerations when making supply path optimisation decisions. Quality Path Optimisation (QPO) is the answer for marketers who want to drive superior business results by optimising toward quality inventory and more effective supply paths.
What is QPO?
QPO is a supply path optimisation process that takes into account both the cost and quality of impressions served, helping advertisers better navigate the complex layers of the programmatic supply chain. It is a powerful tool with which marketers can better evaluate the supply path, understand the cost of quality impressions, identify supply paths that are leading to poor media quality and high cost, and differentiate between publishers that are delivering value and which are not.
How Does QPO Improve Your Programmatic Campaigns
QPO is not only useful for increasing efficiencies in reaching quality inventory for ads but also gives marketers actionable transparency that can be used to make in-flight optimisations in the short term and broader strategic optimisations in the long term. Through actionable transparency in your programmatic campaigns, QPO helps marketers to:
- Invest in quality inventory that can help them improve their ad viewability, ensure brand safety, reduce ad fraud, and make sure the ad is in-geo)
- Identify paths that are driving poor media quality and high-cost
- Evaluate the supply path, including which SSPs are helping drive scale, efficiencies, and Quality ImpressionsTM and which are not
- Differentiate between publishers that are delivering value and those which are not
- Access a singular view of programmatic campaign performance that includes media quality, cost, supply path, and performance metrics
What It Means To Invest In Quality Impressions
CPM alone does not tell marketers the real cost of media. And, making decisions on cost alone can compromise the quality of impressions being served. To invest in quality impressions means the ad must be viewable, by a real person, in a brand-safe and suitable environment, and in the correct geo. The quality of your ad impressions is related to campaign performance, including conversion rates and ROI. By focusing on quality and cost transparency, marketers can choose high-quality paths that lead to higher conversion rates, lower costs per conversion, and higher ROIs.
