Commentary

It's Not Your Father's Media-Buying Marketplace

U.S. ad spending expanded at a healthy 8% rate through the first eight months of 2024, but new data being released by Guideline (formerly Standard Media Index) this morning shows some sectors -- especially the most "premium" ones -- grew much faster than the rest of the marketplace.

The data -- which comes from a new "Programmatic Marketplace Insights" report being rolled out by the media-buying intelligence platform -- reveals a markedly stratified U.S. advertising marketplace, with "traditional" media -- the "linear" kind -- actually declining 5% through August, while the most "premium" kinds are expanding at a much faster rate.

The report does not delineate -- or define -- what overall "premium" ad inventory actually is, and for my part, I still think that largely is in the eye of the beholders -- on both the buy and the sell sides of the marketplace. But thanks to Guideline's sophisticated media-buying taxonomy, at least we now know how big holding companies and independent media-buying agencies define premium programmatic media buys.

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And while the new report doesn't actually delineate the volume or market share of it, it is the fastest-growing segment within Guideline's pool of big agency media-buying data, expanding nearly half as much again (47%) over the first eight months of the year.

The data reveals that it's not just overall volume growth, but pricing increases as well. (See table below for Guideline data illustrating premium inventory effective CPM (cost-per-thousand) margin growth for digital video, OTT (over-the-top TV), standard display and streaming audio ad inventory in the open, programmatic direct and direct IO sold marketplaces during the second quarter of this year.

“When the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020, only a quarter of programmatic investment was bought via premium deals, with open exchanges dominating the programmatic landscape,” notes Guideline Head of Product Strategy, Direct Solutions Alberto Leyes, adding: “That number has since grown to 48% in the first eight months of 2024 – posting +47% growth year-over-year – with a projected share of 50% by the end of 2024."

Personally, I've been asking Guideline (previously Standard Media Index) for this kind of data for nearly a decade, and hope they continue to release some of it publicly so we can continue to provide an objective view of what is driving the advertising marketplace. Because I agree with Guideline's Leyes when he points out: “Long gone are the days when top content was reserved for direct-sold inventory, and there couldn’t be a better example of this than the Olympics having been traded programmatically for the first time this year through the agreement between NBCU and The Trade Desk."

In other words, it's not your father's old-school upfront/scatter media-buying marketplace.

 

1 comment about "It's Not Your Father's Media-Buying Marketplace".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, October 3, 2024 at 10:09 a.m.

    Interesting but not surprising data, Joe.

    Setting aside the issue of how "premium" is defined---as you noted----the fact that buys made directly with the sellers feature considerably higher CPMs than those made by computers tells only part of the story. It would be useful-----if they are willing to porovide the info--- to know how much of the ad spend falls into each buying category.  For example, if direct video buys account for 40% versus only 10% of all ad dollars that provides  a context for the percent change stats that are cited in the table.

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