Step #1 Start Early and Leverage PMP/Guaranteed Deals

45% of US consumers say they plan to start shopping before November 1. This creates a sufficient window (approx. 60 days) for marketers to get their brand campaigns in front of the desired audiences. Marketers can start Advertising campaigns early not only to captures the consumer’s attention at the right time but also giving marketers a higher chance of booking exclusive high-value publisher inventory through the private marketplace (PMP) deals at a much reasonable price.

Most of the supply partners earmark a set of inventory, especially for the holiday season. Marketers should reach out to supply partners immediately and ask for exclusive holiday-focused inventory packages. Guaranteed Deals and PMPs are limited and as a programmatic buyer make sure you grab the best of the audience at best of the price before time runs out

Step #2 Go for Premium Direct Inventory Only

Increase the efficiency of brand video campaigns by running ads with supply partners that offer direct inventory, bonus if this inventory is available via server-side auction. Not only marketers get the price benefits by eliminating several hops of resellers, but they also get reduced latency (<200 ms on Chocolate Premium video SSP) and better inventory data (Bid Enrichment) to make informed decisions. Premium inventory is rare and comes generally with higher viewability (80%+) and completion rates ensuring marketers get the best utilization of their brand dollars

Step #3 Diversify Spends

Marketers and programmatic buyers in order to optimize the supply path tend to restrict spends to fewer SSPs/Supply partners than they usually used to partner with earlier. This is a decent strategy but closing supply paths might not be the most effective way to peak your brand video campaigns during the holiday season.

Publishers usually during holidays look for higher CPMs and fill rates and thus, enable more supply partners than usual to gain higher revenue. Marketers may observe unique inventory across different supply partners. Diversify the spends across multiple supply partners and monitor closely the performance of each. Importantly, make sure you measure and verify each supply partner inventory which brings us to our next important step

Step #4 Measure and Verify

Make sure the supply partner marketer’s buy from offers real-time measurement of all important KPIs as well is in compliance with the latest anti-fraud industry initiatives by IAB like Sellers.json, OpenRTB Supply Chain Object, follow ads.txt and app-ads.txt specs for inventory addition and is awarded TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal by Trustworthy Accountability Group.

Marketers and programmatic buyers shall be able to crawl ads.txt/app-ads.txt files or review publicly available Sellers.json anytime to be assured that they are buying brand-safe, correct inventory and not wasting any brand ad dollars during the critical holiday season on fraudulent players.

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