The Commerce Desk’s transfer to lump all supply-side platforms (SSPs) underneath the “reseller” label is touchdown precisely as anticipated — with resistance. Index Change, one of many largest SSPs, known as the reclassification “ignorant”, rejecting what it sees as an oversimplification of its position within the ecosystem.
CEO and president Andrew Casale made the remarks on stage on the ATS convention in London on Tuesday (Sept. 9), marking one of many extra direct rebukes of The Commerce Desk’s positioning from a significant SSP.
“I believe they’re prepared to take a look at SSPs this manner is, fairly frankly, ignorant,” stated Casale.
Questioning why semantics has Casale fired up? Right here’s the rundown:
When The Commerce Desk reclassified SSPs as “resellers” a number of weeks in the past, it wasn’t only a semantic shift — it was a sign. Beneath its media shopping for platform Kokai, these resellers are scored as much less environment friendly, that means they’ll see fewer advert {dollars}. As an alternative. The Commerce Desk is rerouting extra of these {dollars} by way of its personal curated model of the open market of programmatic auctions and direct writer offers.
“The narrative that reducing out an SSP is someway inherently extra environment friendly is ignorant,” stated Casale.
From The Commerce Desk’s standpoint, the shift is about reducing out waste. The corporate has lengthy argued that too many distributors within the supp;y chain have been extracting worth with out delivering it — significantly those that sit farther from the writer and act extra like pass-through intermediaries than true SSPs.
Casale agrees — up to a degree.
“There may be some reality to the characterization — that in sure facets of the availability chain — there are a whole lot of corporations that purport to be an SSP after they’re truly taking greater than the worth they create,” Casale. “Usually, these corporations are at a distance from the writer so you need to body them appropriately as a reseller.”
However the issue, he continued, is in making use of that framing universally. That, he stated, is what misses the mark — and what has different SSPs quietly bristling too.
“That cohort doesn’t converse universally for the class,” continued Casale.
In different phrases, not all SSPs are created equal. Some have direct contracts with publishers. Some function actual extensions of these companies. And plenty of of these corporations now really feel they’re being penalized for the inefficiencies of others. It’s a well-recognized rigidity in programmatic: one firm’s reform is one other’s overreach. The Commerce Desk could also be attempting to wash up the availability chain however in doing so it’s additionally redrawing the traces of energy.
“The one a part of this market that will get to resolve whether or not or not a vendor is a reseller is the client,” stated Casale. “When you ask the media proprietor what their relationship is to Index Change and even say Magnite then I don’t assume they might agree that we’re resellers.”
As a lot as advert execs share Casale’s frustrations, many — begrudgingly — additionally perceive the place The Commerce Desk is coming from. On the finish of the day, its job is to optimize spend based mostly on what it believes delivers essentially the most worth to advertisers. And most of the time, which means routing {dollars} by way of its personal curated provide paths.
Will Doherty, svp of stock improvement at The Commerce Desk, harassed that time to Digiday final month — and never for the primary time. The Commerce Desk has lengthy warned SSPs in opposition to pushing questionable stock into the bidstream. It’s raised the difficulty repeatedly — privately and publicly — and feels these warnings went largely ignored.
“The road between SSPs and DSPs is blurring. With The Commerce Desk’s OpenPath, Magnite’s ClearLine, and PubMatic’s Activate, the transfer to full-stack is underway,” stated Jeff Hirsch, CEO of boutique consulting agency Govt Guru. ”In the end, acronyms outline classes, not corporations — the gamers that survive might be people who ship actual worth, not simply resell visitors. The attention-grabbing factor is that a lot of this may occasionally not matter for much longer as agentic platforms create the means for provide and demand to instantly work collectively.”
The Commerce Desk didn’t remark in response to this text.
