• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 21, 2014

Timing is everything, right? Especially if you’re a publisher deciding whether to participate in open RTB vs. private exchanges. And it’s not a real-time kind of timing, but a quarterly one, according to Richard Routman, Chief Revenue Officer of Sporting News Media.

“It depends on the quarter,” Routman said during “The Revenue of Quality” panel at OMMA Chicago this afternoon.

If it’s the first- or second-quarter, when publishers might be a little more hungry to fill unsold inventory, Routman said they might be a little more open-minded about open RTB. Come third- or fourth-quarter when they’re at a greater capacity, “it may be a“it may be an unnecessary tactic.”

Routman said it’s all a function of “how sold-through” a publisher is, implying that most publisehrs would just as soon sell their inventory directly.

That’s from a publisher’s perspective. From an advertiser’s perspective, Routman said many publishers many not even have the data quality necessary to help a brand find the quality audience they are looking for.

“Frankly I don’t think publishers have spent a lot of time building up their first-party data,” he said, adding that in a lot of cases, publishers are simply “passing through the same third-party data” clients can buy directly from other third-party data sources.