Commentary

The Ultimate Oxymoron: Premium Remnant

Wait, what? "Premium remnant" doesn't make any sense…does it? As oxymoronic as it is, new research from TubeMogul suggests that premium remnant just might be a thing. During big events, even remnant inventory sees a boost in price.

The research shows that sports video publishers saw a huge jump in prices for in-stream video ads sold programmatically during March Madness. During the tournament as a whole, prices were 36.1% higher ($10.19 CPM) than normal. During the Sweet 16, prices jumped up 53.9% ($11.52 CPM) above average. The data was collected on exchanges such as LiveRail, Google AdX, and spotXchange. The publishers could not be named, but included some comScore 100 properties.

So, what does this go to show? For one, it shows that just like other ad sale methods, the prices on real-time exchanges jump when content gets hot. The Super Bowl is everyone's go to example of boosting ad prices around a big event, but opportunities for publishers to cash in come much more than just once a year. The savvy publisher won't just wait for their market's event of the year to take advantage.

Sticking with the sports theme, in the coming weeks sports publishers have the start of the baseball season, The Masters, the Final Four, and the NFL Draft. The world outside never stops being interesting - there's always a chance to make premium remnant.

1 comment about "The Ultimate Oxymoron: Premium Remnant".
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  1. Mark Mclaughlin from McLaughlin Strategy, April 5, 2013 at 5:22 p.m.

    As advertisers we are still getting used to the difference between TV and online audiences. On TV, experts decide what makes for compelling content. The best professional content aggregates the biggest audience simultaneously. But online, EACH CONSUMER DEFINES HIGH QUALITY CONTENT for themselves using their own "expertise" and big audiences are aggregated one ad impression at a time. Clearly, individual consumers do not agree with the professionals. That is why HULU does not have much reach. That is why YouTube is 1000X bigger then the video audiences for a TV network's website. TV experts put "The Following" in primetime but they would put "Gangnam Style" on at 2AM in the morning and sell "remnant" advertising around it. But online, nothing is remnant in terms of "compelling content." By definition, the video stream being watched is premium video for that consumer at that moment in time. We know this is true because that consumer has 10,000 other video choices that are one or two clicks away and they are all free. If a consumer is shopping for a high end sports car and that consumer happens to decide to watch a cheap exercise video on YouTube, Lexus is making a big mistake to avoid streaming a video commercial there for a premium price because some expert on analog video says the content is "remnant."

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About the Author

Tyler Loechner is a MediaPost Reporter covering real-time, programmatic, RTB and more. You can reach Tyler at tyler@mediapost.com.