Just over one year ago, news broke that
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yieldex had agreed to come together to adopt
“programmatic direct” as their trading method of choice and worked to create a standard API -- dubbed OpenDirect -- for the programmatic trading of premium inventory.
This morning
the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the official API, OpenDirect 1.0, for public comment. MediaMath and Bionic Advertising Systems joined AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yieldex to develop the
API specifications.
“Programmatic direct,” also sometimes called “programmatic premium,” is a hybrid trading method involving both direct sales tactics and
automation.
The IAB’s OpenDirect 1.0 specifications can be read in full here. It’s over 100 pages long, so we
can’t cover it all in this space. However, the IAB highlights two things that “should be noted," so we will highlight them here:
“The API takes an advertiser first
approach,” the document reads. “Both advertisers and agencies must sign up with the publisher and receive credentials. Advertisers may perform their own buys or provide consent to
have an agency perform buys on their behalf; for an agency to perform buys on behalf of an advertiser, the advertiser must provide consent. The process of signing up and providing consent is publisher
defined.”
In addition: “To book a line, the line must have a creative assigned to it. The creative may be the actual creative that the advertiser plans to run or a placeholder
creative that is later replaced with the actual creative when it becomes available. However, the line will run with whichever creative is assigned to it (the actual creative or placeholder
creative).”
The IAB contends the specifications will increase workflow efficiencies for publishers, give them greater control of packaging, pricing and delivery of inventory and give
them a realizable way of automating reserved inventory.
Forbuyers, theIAB says the standard will provide accesstobiggerpoolsofuniqueusers, increaseefficiencyby using justoneAPIintegrationacrossmultiplepublishersandallowbuyerstobookguaranteeddeliveryandaccesstomediaofferings that are notavailableonanexchange.
“This common set of API specifications sets the stage for direct programmatic
ad sales and will allow buyers who want to access guaranteed inventory via automated processes avoid multiple, costly, custom integrations,” stated Scott Cunningham, VP of technology and ad
operations at IAB.