Insufficient inventory is still a challenge for private marketplaces

The issue of audience targeting won’t likely be resolved until more inventory is allocated to PMPs. Because marketers only have access to a small amount of biddable inventory in PMPs, any audience targeting or frequency capping that advertisers implement severely reduces potential impressions they can buy. To that point, publishers at past Digiday events have encouraged marketers “to be more flexible with their targeting” in order for PMP’s to scale.

In the survey for 2018, an “other” option was introduced where respondents could write in their own issues. A frequent response amount respondents who choose to write in an “other”  option was the problem of pricing. Many felt that PMPs were too expensive. One survey respondent claimed PMPs specifically lack, “pricing flexibility on floor prices.” Research from Pubmatic found that mobile inventory in PMPs cost 155 percent that of mobile inventory in open exchanges.  Another common complaint of PMP’s people listed was the high level of technical expertise necessary to set up the deals and lack of resources for troubleshooting when problems go wrong. If it’s any consolation to marketers, one publisher confessed to Digiday that they were left clueless why a PMP deal with a $30,000 budget only transacted a fraction of that.