‘A clean, unadulterated supply chain’: The Trade Desk on a year into its OpenPath direct deals with publishers

By Seb Joseph

It’s been a year since The Trade Desk started buying ads directly from some of the biggest publishers — a move it called OpenPath.

And what a year it’s been.

First, there was the initial furore over the move — the kind that always happens whenever a company is deemed to have encroached on another’s turf. In this instance, observers thought the Trade Desk was coming after those companies that already help publishers sell impressions to advertisers.

Then came the intrigue — the sort that can only really happen when execs think the rewards outweigh the risks. The rewards being even more programmatic ad dollars from what is probably the second largest source of them for publishers in The Trade Desk.

So far, the intrigue has overshadowed the furore.

OpenPath is not only being used by some of the most recognizable brands in publishing, it’s also being used by some of the most visited ones too. The ones that don’t fit into either category don’t fit into this plan. In other words, OpenPath is quickly becoming a direct link to strategically important publishers for The Trade Desk.

“It’s really allowed us to see what a clean, unadulterated supply chain can look like,” said Will Doherty, vp of inventory development at The Trade Desk, who has been leading the rollout of OpenPath over the last year.

That “clean, unadulterated” connection he mentioned refers to the fact that OpenPath is a way for advertisers to buy impressions sans fewer ad tech middlemen. The fewer intermediaries there are, the fewer that will take a cut of programmatic spending that would otherwise have gone to publishers. And the more this happens the more bidding power on the advertiser side. More bidding power means advertisers have more money to make competitive bids — which is obviously good for publishers.

That’s the crux of OpenPath’s pitch: it’s an additional bid from The Trade Desk without the intermediaries. As Doherty explained: “OpenPath has been a source of incrementality for our publishers, which was one of its original intentions. It was about doing something incremental for those publishers who felt there wasn’t a lot of unique demand in the market.”

Publishers just have to pay a single-fee for the privilege of getting that demand. The ones who have, for now at least, are seeing the benefits.

Take Cafe Media. The company, which handles monetization operations for independent publishers, has been selling impressions with OpenPath, has characterized the benefits of it as “really good’, said Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer at Cafe Media.

“One of the key ways we measure performance of any partner we work with is through incrementality,” he added. “Like, how much more money are we making than we would have made had we not had this relationship… OpenPath started out [improving] in moderate increments, like good, not amazing, but it has grown a lot over time.”

Bannister also informed Digiday that OpenPath is not the only means by which The Trade Desk spends budgets with …read more

Source:: Digiday