Their long, almost Sisyphaen quest to figure out how much ad tech vendors are pocketing from their programmatic dollars has taken yet another turn.
“The big push from agencies at the moment is fee transparency,” said Matt Sattel, chief revenue officer at OpenX.
They want proof that ad tech vendors are taking only what they claim because the more money that reaches publishers, the better their chances of winning the impressions they actually want. The more vendors pocket, the tougher that gets.
That’s certainly the undercurrent of many conversations Wayne Blodwell has been having with ad tech vendors, particularly the supply-side platforms helping publishers sell programmatic ads, since stepping in as Assembly’s svp of programmatic in December. In fact, “fee transparency remains a key factor” when assessing whether his agency will spend money with those vendors throughout the year.
To make those decisions there, he, along with many of his counterparts, are relying on two key tactics: securing access to an ad tech vendor’s log-level data, which tracks every detail of an impression they oversee, and then cross referencing those take rates directly with publishers to flag and fix any discrepancies.
Of course, nothing in programmatic advertising is ever that simple (as plenty of buyers will confirm), but that’s not stopping more of them from digging in.
“Overall, buyers are looking to understand SSPs’ take rates by publisher,” said Sattel. “They know not all deals or deal types are the same, and they want to ensure they’re working with partners who are being transparent, not taking more from some publishers than others.”
Momentum has picked up since the fall. Some of it stems from the rise of new ad tech players like curators, who keep their fee structures murky, leaving buyers in the dark about whether they’re taking money that was intended for publishers. The rest comes from programmatic’s usual headaches: ad fraud, shadowy intermediaries siphoning off more than their fair share and the ever present inefficiencies of a tangled supply chain.
In fairness, these conversations have never really stopped. Agencies and their clients have spent over a decade chasing these answers, only to be stonewalled by programmatic’s tangled mechanics. The difference now is that they’re getting savvier about getting those answers, leveraging DSP log data, publisher reconciliation, and direct negotiations to get a clearer picture of where their dollars are going.
“While we may not see the exact publisher payout, we can break apart tech, audience, and platform fees from working media spend,” said David Nyurenberg, director of video product development and innovation at Rain the Growth Agency.
Nyurenberg and his team use this breakdown to assess whether tech fees actually add value or should be minimized to push more spend toward the actual publisher. They also prioritize direct publisher deals through pirate marketplaces and programmatic guaranteed deals, strategies that ensure more dollars land where they’re supposed to.
“To validate, we work directly with our publisher representatives to compare what was spent at the DSP level against what was ultimately received by the publisher,” said Nyurenberg.
That he’s gone to such lengths speaks volumes. Even now, prying open the black box of programmatic fees remains an exercise in frustration. DSP log files offer little more than a hazy summary, bundling SSPs and publisher payments together. On the other end, SSPs privately negotiate their fees with publishers, meaning there’s no standardized way to break down their take rate.
Marketers might have stopped there, tangled in the usual knots. But they’re pressing on, looking beyond SSPs to other sell-side vendors. And the further they go, the more curators find themselves under the microscope –largely because their fees are often layered on top of existing SSP costs, bundled transactions and obscured by non-disclosed revenue sharing agreements, making it nearly impossible to pin down exactly how much they’re taking from programmatic budgets.
“Unlike SSPs, most curators (which sit in the supply chain but aren’t always classified as SSPs) operate in a black box, often choosing not to disclose their fees or markup structures to buyers,” said Ravi Patel, CEO and co-founder of media platform SWYM.ai. “This is especially concerning when curators are charging 30%+ for repackaging existing SSP inventory into “exclusive” lists without adding real value beyond segmentation.“
Marketers might have stopped there, tangled in the usual knots. But they’re pressing on, looking beyond SSPs to other sell-side vendors. And the further they go, the more curators find themselves under the microscope –largely because their fees are often layered on top of existing SSP costs, bundled transactions and obscured by non-disclosed revenue sharing agreements, making it nearly impossible to pin down exactly how much they’re taking from programmatic budgets.
“The lack of standardization across log files and the opaque nature of curator fees still make it difficult to pinpoint where inefficiencies exist,” said Patel. “The more agencies push for transparency at all layers — beyond just the SSP level — the more likely we are to see shifts in how curation and inventory packaging are priced.
The clamor for free transparency might suggest that marketers are poised to do what they’ve always done — chase the lowest costs. But experience has taught them that low fees don’t necessarily translate into better outcomes. Winning more ads requires a far more intricate calculus: pruning redundant resellers, strengthening direct publishers ties, and yes, negotiating lower tech fees. Which is to say, fee transparency is merely a starting point, one piece of a much larger puzzle.
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