Programmatic Advertising: Publishers’ Contradictory Approach to Pricing 💰⚖️

By Max Legrand · GreyFox Ads · A view from the French programmatic market

A publisher wanted to protect the value of its inventory. So it quoted us a direct deal at twice the price available through a reseller. Guess which route the DSP actually bought? 😈

A real curated instream video deal 🎬

A while ago, we set up a curated instream video deal combining a segment from a third-party data provider with a carefully selected whitelist of websites.

Looking at the campaign’s supply paths, we noticed something interesting: the trader’s DSP was buying inventory from one publisher via the SSP seat of a quality reseller we had whitelisted. This was not a story about a fraudulent intermediary. The reseller was legitimate. But it raised a straightforward question: could we build a better route for both the advertiser and the publisher?

Why go directly through the publisher’s SSP seat?

Our idea was simple: remove an unnecessary intermediary and replace the third-party audience segment with the publisher’s own first-party data. We contacted the publisher and requested a direct video (VOL) deal with audience targeting.

In theory, that could deliver three benefits: a more direct supply path, a larger share of spend reaching the publisher and a first-party audience proposition better aligned with its own inventory. Of course, a direct route only wins if the commercial terms and targeting are competitive too.

For more on the distinction between inventory quality and transaction efficiency, read our guide to the two real challenges of supply path optimisation.

The pricing paradox: twice the Open Auction price 🤯

The publisher sent us the deal. The price? Twice what we were paying in the Open Auction.

We expected some premium for first-party targeting. In our example, an additional €1 CPM for the data might have been understandable. But the proposed deal came with approximately €5 extra CPM for what appeared to be the same underlying ad-server placement.

When we raised the discrepancy, we pointed out that the reseller route remained around 40% cheaper, with targeting included. Those figures describe this specific commercial comparison, not a general market benchmark (and different audience definitions or deal terms can affect true like-for-like comparability).

The publisher’s answer was understandable from a sales perspective: “We don’t want to devalue our inventory.” But from the DSP’s perspective, the alternative path was still available at a materially lower price.

Why did the DSP choose the reseller?

Because the DSP optimises against its campaign objectives and available bids, not against a publisher’s desire to prioritise a particular sales channel. If two paths offer sufficiently comparable inventory and targeting, the more expensive one may struggle to win impressions.

That does not mean every direct deal should be priced like the Open Auction. Direct deals can include guarantees, priority, exclusivity, richer data or operational services that justify a premium. In our case, however, the publisher’s quoted premium was too large to compete with the route already working.

The outcome was exactly what we feared: the DSP kept buying via the reseller and the third-party data provider. The publisher therefore missed the opportunity to capture more of the intermediary and data value through its own direct offer (the exact net revenue difference would require the contractual fee breakdown).

SPO is not just about removing intermediaries

Supply path optimisation (SPO) should consider the actual placement, the net amount received by the publisher, the data proposition and the final cost to the advertiser. Fewer hops are useful, but not if the resulting route is commercially uncompetitive.

We have explored how a lower DSP bid can still win an impression and why reseller-heavy supply paths deserve scrutiny. Both issues matter here: buyer-side price and publisher-side yield are connected, but they are not identical.

Two practical recommendations for publishers

1. Compare your direct floors with the prices available through resellers. For genuinely shared placements, monitor the effective advertiser price, SSP fees and publisher net revenue. If a reseller can consistently undercut your direct deal for a comparable impression, your direct seat may struggle to attract demand. Aligning rate cards does not mean blindly lowering every floor; it means understanding what buyers can actually access elsewhere.

2. Make first-party audiences easier to activate. Rather than relying exclusively on bespoke high-floor deals, explore pushing eligible first-party segments into DSPs or curators, including compatible Open Auction workflows where supported and permitted. That can help publisher data compete with third-party providers without forcing buyers into a commercially unattractive route (subject to consent, interoperability, contractual terms and technical feasibility).

Related reading: who captures value across the programmatic supply chain and how 1.5-party data can support audience activation.

Protect the value of your inventory — not just the price list

The irony is that the publisher wanted to avoid devaluing its inventory, yet the same inventory remained available through another route at a lower price. The result was not stronger monetisation through its own seat. It was more spend flowing through intermediaries.

For French publishers looking to reclaim control of their programmatic revenues, competitive direct pricing and accessible first-party data can be more effective than simply setting a high floor and hoping the DSP follows.

This article expands on an original LinkedIn post by Max Legrand (the figures refer to one anonymised campaign example).