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The recent advertiser perception survey of the SSP market shows that (drum roll.) Google is still the dominant gateway to online advertising, although publishers are testing and adding more SSPs more than ever.
The survey was conducted in February and March of this year and includes 151 editorial managers, each representing a site with at least three million unique monthly visitors and selling inventory using an SSP.
An important trend is the steady growth of the average number of SSPs per publisher.
A year ago, programmatic publishers were using an average of five SSPs. Now, that number is six, and it’s going up. And in another year, the average is expected to climb back to seven, said Lauren Fisher, vice president of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions.
The SSP trend is the opposite of what happened with the SDRs. The average number of buying platforms used by advertisers dropped from six to three over the course of three years.
Publishers are open to putting as many pipes into their inventory as possible if such an SSP can prove they have a unique supply or data that will make the publisher more money, Fisher said.
In other words, advertisers want as few pipes as possible, to keep an eye on digital media spending; Publishers are encouraged to continue adding bidders to their inventory.
This helped boost utilization rates in the SSP market. Last year, only Google Ad Manager and Amazon Publisher Services surpassed a 40% usage rate, with 74% and 49% respectively. But since then, Verizon Media, PubMatic, Xander Monetize, OpenX, SpotX, and Index Exchange have all passed two-fifths of adoption.
However, utilization rates aren’t the best metric they just measure that publishers integrate with certain SSPs, with no guarantee of significant spend actually being passed on between platforms.
When Advertiser Perceptions ask publishers which SSP is their favorite single, Google is pretty firm at 51%, while Magnite, Xander, SpotX, Amazon and Verizon pull between 5% and 7%.
Google is in a much more dominant position on the SSP side, Advertiser Perceptions strategy chief Kevin Mannion said. As a DSP, there is more than a pitched battle between Google, Amazon, and The Trade Desk.
Verizon Media, for example, has earned ten or more points in terms of adopting SSPs over the past year, Mannion said. This is partly due to the fact that the company completed a messy integration of as many as six different SSPs that were part of AOL and Yahoo. The company also gave its weight to a proprietary post-cookie ID, the ConnectID, which leverages first-party data from Verizon sites like Yahoo Sports and HuffPost. According to the report, twenty-eight percent of publishers use or are exploring how to integrate with ConnectID. Unified ID2.0, an industry identifier supported by The Trade Desk and many independent ad technology platforms, is still the most common programmatic identifier (aside from third party cookies) with 56%.
Non-Google SSPs have room to grow, as well as push for programmatic ID adoption. For one thing, header bidding is now pretty much a default technology for site monetization, but it’s gaining ground in videos and CTVs. 55% of publishers now use header biding for video ads, up from 37% last year. And 22% use header bidding for CTV ads in the first Advertiser Perceptions report to measure that statistic.
Private Markets (PMPs) are also an advantage for SSPs. Nine out of 10 publishers now use PMPs and rely on SSPs to manage those products.
There’s a benefit to SSPs that are part of full-stack ad offerings, from first-party media right up to the DSP, Fisher said. He said platforms like Google, Amazon, and Verizon have actually sold advertisers and agencies on proprietary identity alternatives to third-party cookies.
The editors they spoke to say they will get along with Google, and with Googles the Privacy Sandbox, cohorts and FLoC, Fisher said of how editors are looking into identity solutions. But they are also trying to see what else is out there.
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