In a highly competitive and congested industry, knowing the ins and outs of supply side platforms (SSP) will give you the upper hand. Better yet, knowing what key features you should seek will help you be more specific and your campaign more effective. 

The global Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home (pDOOH) market is forecasted to hit 4.48 billion dollars by 2027. The increased transactions from both brands and media agencies in programmatically booked campaigns presents the opportunity for media owners in the industry to access new revenues and get a bigger piece of the pie from the total ad spend.

Enabling a pDOOH campaign can be as simple as approving a friend request on facebook, provided you possess the relevant planning and trading systems and softwares. But what system do you need to get started with programmatic?

You need a software that allows you to make your inventory available to media buyers – a supply-side platform (SSP).

What Is a Supply-Side Platform?

An SSP is a piece of advertising technology (AdTech) that allows you to streamline and automate the selling process of your DOOH inventory. It connects your screens to new markets and disparate media buyers. 

One major aspect of an SSP is that it is designed to sell your inventory at the highest possible price based on the bids received. Like in a real life auction, the highest bidder wins the item they are bidding for, your inventory will be allocated to the highest bidder, hence, making you more money. 

A platform like this allows your inventory to be booked from afar. Cross-border deals can be closed without the hassle of negotiating.

One thing to keep in mind is that not all SSPs are created the same way. Some may not have the features to fulfill certain nuances of the DOOH industry. 

Here are some key features to consider when choosing an SSP for your business.

Connect inventory to multiple DSPs

Advertisers like brands and media agencies use demand-side platforms (DSP) to book, build, manage and analyze campaigns from one central spot. 

Having an SSP that connects to various DSPs will ensure your inventory is more visible and reaches more potential buyers, increasing the probability of sales of your outdoor screens.

Increase Efficiency of Selling Process

An SSP allows media owners like you to automate your inventory selling process. You will be able to manage the distribution of your screens to advertisers from one location. 

The traditional way of doing this is to be physically present, manually assigning ad to the selected site.

Automating your business will not just save you time, but it will also help you cut operational costs.

Integrated Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is a software or platform that allows you to deliver the correct content to the correct audience at the right time. You will be able to create, modify and distribute content remotely.

You will also be able to monitor all the digital screens in your network from your computer or mobile device.

All you will have to do as a digital screen owner is to manage the schedule of your content and leave the rest to your CMS.

Provides or Enables Integration to Audience Measurement

The tipping point where Programmatic DOOH will become the preferred choice of activating outdoor advertising will be driven by the availability of data. This could be industry standard data on impressions, audience intent data, and so on.

With the advancement of technology, media owners like you can access audience data in your hands if the SSP your inventory is on has an audience based measurement feature.

You will be able to access unbiased location-specific data directly from your SSP and this could act as the foundation to preparing detailed proposals and reports for your advertisers.

Conclusion

Supply-side platforms will help you deal with the growing demand for out-of-home advertising. Getting your hands on the right platform with the right features should allow you to increase your revenue. 

The right SSP should also keep evolving with times to ensure that your business is protected at all times.

A supply-side platform has blessed digital advertisers and publishers with automation functionality. The ad exchange space is constantly changing, hence it is critical to understand how an SSP selects an ad to be displayed on a specific ad inventory.

This is because the process depends on the following features of a supply-side platform:

Target audience selection

With SSP, publishers are able to manage their ad slots as per the needs of specific localised audiences and advertisers.

SSP helps in building a comprehensive portrait of the audience by adding another layer of meaning with location data.

Publishers can ensure different vendors from all over the world can have access to the same ad space.

Publishers can also get a higher CPM for in-demand impressions and niche audiences as SSP enhances data management capabilities with a reliable data management platform (DMP).

This platform usually has additional connections to external sources of data for advanced traffic analysis, audience segmentation, and impressions.

Real-time transactions

Compatibility for real-time bidding (RTB) is possibly the most important feature of a supply-side platform.

Advertisers can use their DSP to bid for ad space on a popular article or video. As the SSP defines the bid range, the DSP will automatically offer a price that’s mutually beneficial.

Then the SSP looks at the available bids to select the best ad – all in real-time.

However, a mismatch between the advertiser’s requirements and the publisher’s availability might occur.

When this happens, SSP will modify the parameters to minimise the possibility of the inventory going unutilised. SSP will help leverage historic data from the advertiser (i.e average bids) to fine-tune parameters accordingly. 

Data-rich impressions

The supply-side platform organises publishers’ data to offer precise targeting options for brands and advertisers.

With the help of the supply side platform, publishers offer impressions with extensive context based on user behaviour and preferences. 

SSPs also add the geographical dimension to impressions by supplying them with geolocation data.

Mobile SSP can also provide a more precise geotargeting depending on the type of connection of the device.

What Do We Offer?

LMX provides an innovative supply-side solution for media owners to optimise their inventory management and automate OOH selling and buying processes.

LMX offers automated dynamic content scheduling and real-time ad-serving for businesses seeking to achieve operational efficiency.

The platform also provides two options of public cloud and private cloud for businesses to have complete control.

DOOH campaigns that come in different types and formats can also be supported and served traditionally, dynamically and programmatically.

Advertising technology investments have been moving closer to digital advertising media. This shift hugely depends on the usage of supply-side platforms (SSPs), where it is responsible for mediating the allocation of ad content in the publishing space. 

SSPs is an advertising tool and technology that helps media owners manage and optimise their ad inventories.

The platform manages media owners’ ad space information and enables them to automate their inventories selling process, coordinate the supply and distribution of inventory to and from advertisers.

Previously, media owners used manual means when doing any selling transactions.

This requires them to manually assign an ad to each OOH space.

However, with the increasing adoption of digital OOH and programmatic advertising, an effective SSP is very much needed to cater to a large number of competitive advertisers.

Digital ads comprise nearly half of the world’s total advertising spends and much of this depends on supply-side platforms.

Media owners utilise SSPs to optimise their inventory usage to avoid media wastage and increase cost-efficiency.

A supply-side platform performs a critical function for digital advertisers and publishers.

Without it, publishers would be limited to a small set of advertisers as it isn’t possible to evaluate so many bids without automation.

Working together with and on a similar technology as demand-side platforms (DSP), SSPs take stock of a media owners’ total inventory, evaluate the advertisers and content available, and recommend the best match for every OOH space.

Supply-side platforms evaluate advertisers, set the bidding range, and place the content in real-time.

This happens through several micro-transactions across the digital advertising supply chain. A typical supply-side platform checks each bid until it arrives at the perfect fit, passing from one to the next.

Plus, there are other challenges of not using an SSP: From the rapid evolution of programmatic ads to location intelligence and mobile retargeting – SSP technology has come a long way.

LMX provides an innovative supply-side solution for media owners to optimise their inventory management and automate OOH selling and buying processes.

For businesses seeking to achieve operational efficiency through workflow automation while maintaining security, LMX offers the right solution with automated dynamic content scheduling and real-time ad-serving.

The platform also provides businesses with both options of public cloud and private cloud in order to have complete control.

DOOH campaigns that come in different types and formats can also be supported and served traditionally, dynamically and programmatically.