Programmatic Direct provides publishers with an automated way to directly sell and/or negotiate their inventory. There are three types of deals within this category: Preferred Deals, Programmatic Guaranteed, and Private Auction. They each have their specifics and are used to meet various seller and/or buyer needs. In this article, we will take a closer look at Preferred Deals, their advantages, and disadvantages, as well as their differences from Programmatic Guaranteed and Private Auctions.  What is a Preferred Deal? Preferred Deals are direct deals within which the publisher agrees to provide exclusive first-look to specific inventory in exchange for a predetermined CPM rate. The terms are negotiated via Google Ad Manager and the price is fixed, no auction takes place. The advertiser is not obligated to buy the impressions, hence the alternative name of this type of deal: “programmatic non-guaranteed”. If the advertiser decides he is not interested in the inventory, it goes to an open or a private auction. The publisher can initiate the negotiations with a single advertiser via single or multiple buyers. He can decide to seal the final deal with one or more of those buyers.    Advantages of Preferred Deals Predictability: Publishers get to select the buyers they negotiate with and set a price for the deal they are comfortable with. In this way, they can make much more precise revenue expectations and plan accordingly.   Security: Having the option to choose the advertisers for this type of deal creates a transparent and secure environment where the risk…

Back in 2015, Google launched the open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project for a faster, open mobile web. In 2018 the project moved to an open governance model and then in 2019, it joined the OpenJS Foundation Incubation Program. Today you can use AMP to build a number of things, including websites, web stories, ads, and email. This article will focus on AMP ads – what they are, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as a few best practices if you decide to give AMP ads a shot.  What are AMP ads? AMPHTML ads, also known as AMP ads, combine the technology of the standard HTML ads with that of AMP. This results in very flexible, fast, light, and safe ads that can be delivered on both AMP and non-AMP pages. AMPHTML ads are created only with predefined HTML, CSS, and JavaScript libraries from the AMP Open Source Project, eliminating the possibility for running obscure JavaScript codes and improving security through auto-verification. Three of the more popular AMP ad formats are carousel (ad with more than one image in a carousel, auto-plays when in view), video parallax (a video displayed on top of a banner, the ad plays only on user click), and lightbox (ad expands only on click, uninterested users get more of the website content in view). Publishers interested in video advertising can serve both in-stream and out-stream video ads in AMP.  Advantages  AMP ads come with multiple advantages. Let’s see what they are, starting with the most…

With programmatic digital advertising on the rise in the last few years, the opportunities for publishers and advertisers alike are getting more and more robust. There are several types of deals that fall under the “Programmatic Direct” deal type: programmatic guaranteed, preferred deals, and private auctions. In this article, we will be unfolding the ins and outs of Programmatic Guaranteed. What is Programmatic Guaranteed? Programmatic Guaranteed is an attractive type of campaign to both publishers and advertisers. The sellers get a guaranteed revenue stream, whereas the buyers lock in the exact audience they want to reach. Both sides get predictable results from the deal and mitigate uncertainty. Programmatic Guaranteed allows publishers to negotiate with a buyer the price and terms for specific inventory that would be reserved only for that buyer at a fixed price. Audience targeting happens through device ID or cookies and advertisers get a very precise match to what they are looking for. The deal includes impression volumes and price, frequency capping, what ad sizes and formats will be used, as well as the campaign timeframe. All of this is coded into the Deal ID and handled fully automatically (this is why Programmatic Guaranteed is often confused with Automated Guaranteed, which, however, does not use Deal ID, but rather displays the ads via an ad server API). For Programmatic Guaranteed to work, publisher and buyer Data Management Platforms (DMPs) need to first sync. This allows advertisers to find the right audience and then offer a guaranteed price…