In a pilot campaign of its advanced Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) strategy, Samsung Benelux achieved a 98% ad quality score (confirmed impressions) compared to its benchmark of 70% confirmed impressions. As a result, wasted impressions were cut from 30% to 2%.
The Smart TV manufacturer and service provider leveraged Xandr Curate to run the pilot campaign, in collaboration with Lucidity. Samsung tapped into Lucidity’s blockchain-based technology to analyse and glean insight into the ad supply chain for any unconfirmed impressions, clicks, or other breakages hindering the delivery of ads. It then used Xandr Curate – a Microsoft-owned self-serve platform that allows users to create packages of curated inventory and sell them programmatically – as the mechanism to transact against those insights.
Ben Kneen, Senior Director of Product Manager at Xandr, explains that Samsung’s collaboration with Lucidity enabled it to identify the supply that should be bought. The question remained as to how to operationalise around those insights to buy “that specific supply from those exact paths in one or several DSPs.”
He continues: “That’s when Xandr Curate came in. Xandr Curate is effectively a marketplace creation and management tool. More tactically it’s a way to build multi-seller deals from inventory across the programmatic ecosystem, packaging that inventory into deals any DSP could buy and then layering any additional value you want to bring as a curator (in terms of data assets you have.)”
He cites the SPO strategy developed with Lucidity as one instance of an asset that can be laid over the curated inventory packages, with other examples including unique negotiated commercial assets or unique data. He says: “A lot of times people who are playing in [the curated inventory] space set up independent trading desks. You have to sign IOs (Insertion Order) with them. They would have to run the campaign and pick the DSP.
“Our curated marketplace has really solved the problem of buyers wanting to use their own DSPs. If you’re a media buyer who wants to transact programmatically, you might not want to sign an IO, you might want the reporting to be in your system. Xandr Curate lets all the players in the market that have unique assets – like Lucidity with its supply scoring capabilities – make those assets transactable in a programmatic way for any buyer, with any DSP of their choice.”
This is made possible by the fact that all of the inventory packaging runs off the Deal ID. Kneen remarks: “The Deal ID has been in the market for about ten years. It is probable that 50% of the market is going to get transacted through Deal ID. It’s a really robust, mature, well-supported way to transact, that’s integrated across the entire ecosystem.”
In the case of Samsung’s pilot campaign, Xandr built a Deal ID that targeted the supply Lucidity advised Samsung should buy. He clarifies that transacting against the Deal ID effectively bypasses any SPO logic or optimisation technology that is typically in a DSP. He says: “Deal ID is typically a ‘I know what I want to buy just let my buy it’ mechanism’”.
Xandr research shows that roughly half (47%) of media buyers say driving spend towards performing inventory is a requirement for their supply strategy, and 30% said their objective is to improve transparency.
