Private Marketplace Growth Gives Rise to New Skill Set: The Programmatic Matchmaker

• Revenue from Demand Facilitation over 200% for SpotX in 2016
  
• Private marketplaces expected to account for over 50% of SpotX ad spend in 2017
  
• Curated Marketplaces drive renewed surge in private marketplace growth
  
• Reps from agencies Starcom and Assembly credit demand facilitation with buying efficiencies
  

DENVER, Jan. 26, 2017 -- The continued growth of ad spend transacted programmatically and increase in the use of private marketplaces has given rise to a new skill set in the ad industry -- the publisher-buyer matchmaking specialist.

SpotX’s Demand Facilitation team, which was formed in late 2013, has seen a rapid increase in revenue over the past year as more relationships are structured through private marketplace and direct deals. Revenue generated by SpotX’s Demand Facilitation unit grew over 200% year on year in 2016.

The growth is driven by a continual increase in private marketplace deals, which currently account for around 45% of ad spend transacted on SpotX’s platform -- a figure expected to grow to over 50% in 2017.

One of the factors driving the growth of private marketplaces at SpotX has been the introduction of Curated Marketplaces, which group inventory from multiple publishers, pre-filtered by specific themes such as viewability or audience attributes, to offer a more efficient yet scaled canvas for advertisers. 

“Transitioning from traditional media executions into programmatic transactions is often a major shift for publishers and buyers,” according to Sean Buckley, CRO, at SpotX.

“As ad servers and SSPs continue to advance, and more publishers automate their video sales process, the role of people in programmatic remains as important as ever,” Buckley said. “Demand Facilitation specialists are currently among the fastest growing skill sets needed within our company.”

“Platform customers can lean on the scaled and educated resources our company provides to help source private market demand, structure deals, and set up their own Curated Marketplaces.”

Gabriel Cohen, Programmatic Media Manager, Starcom commented on his experience with SpotX’s Demand Facilitation team: “Working with SpotX to create Curated Marketplaces has creates efficiencies by allowing us to access many premium publishers quickly, and by aggregating spend, we find pricing efficiencies, while still having the full decisioning power of programmatic. Also, this helps us ensure we are getting the scale and reach we need on the type of content that aligns with our client’s goals. SpotX really helps us get access to not just any inventory, but quality, premium inventory, scalable CTV inventory and more.”

Similarly, Patrick Bevilacqua, SVP, Programmatic & Data Strategy at Assembly, experienced buying efficiencies from demand facilitation services: “With Curated Marketplaces, we were able to increase the reach and scale of our campaign across a limited set of DMAs and a short flight period. SpotX’s Demand Facilitation team was quick to provide us a curated list of high indexing, quality websites as well as several preferred publishers to choose from that fit our target audience, W24-45, and greatly influenced the campaign’s success.”

Curated Marketplaces work by bundling multiple publisher connections into a single Deal ID for buyers, the feature helps remove the complexity of adding many PMP line items to a given campaign within a DSP. While providing a major operational efficiency for the buy side, each publisher still sees an independent Deal ID for each campaign in the platform, and can customize their deal terms and business rules on a deal by deal basis.

About SpotX
SpotX is a video inventory management platform providing premium publishers and broadcasters with monetization tools for desktop, mobile and connected devices. The platform features modern ad serving and programmatic enablement technology, and other monetization tools, including outstream video ad units and solutions for connected TV. SpotX gives publishers the control, transparency and actionable insights needed to understand buyer behavior, manage access and pricing, and maximize revenue. The company is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Hamburg, Belfast and Singapore. In July 2014, European entertainment network RTL Group acquired a 65% stake in SpotX. For updates, follow SpotX on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contacts
SpotX
Chris Byrne
+1 646 683 9184
[email protected]