Two of the leading programmatic platforms for digital out-of-home (DOOH) - Vistar Media and Place Exchange - today announce mutual support for each other’s mediation solutions to enable unified auctions for media owners.
Programmatic technology has fueled a surge of advertiser demand for out-of-home (OOH), bringing new investment into the channel. However, the variety of platforms available today can create operational complexity for media owners. Mediation allows DOOH networks to access demand from all available pipes, while still creating a centralized auction where that demand can compete.
With a mediation solution, all SSPs put forth the winning bid from their connected buyers, and the mediation layer conducts an impartial auction to select the highest price from across those bids. This creates a level playing field, and ensures that media owners can maximize yield on any programmatically-sold inventory.
Place Exchange and Vistar Media each operate one of the leading global SSPs in the programmatic OOH space, and also each offer a mediation solution. With this announcement of interoperability, media owners will be able to select the mediation solution of their choice and access demand opportunities made available through either of these SSPs.
“While healthy competition can drive our industry forward, ultimately the needs of our customers come first, and in this case cooperation is the only responsible move to deliver value to media owners,” said Eric Lamb, SVP, Supply at Vistar Media. “Creating a unified auction is critical to unlocking programmatic’s ability to increase rates through competition, and all of our mutual customers will benefit.”
“With continued triple-digit growth in programmatic OOH ad spend driven by an increasingly varied mix of demand sources, the ability for our publishers to maximize yield and reduce complexity is paramount,” said Nick Bennett, SVP, Partnerships at Place Exchange. “As strong advocates of a fair, open, and transparent ecosystem, we believe that reciprocal support for solutions that empower our clients is critical to removing obstacles and accelerating growth."
Mediation also reduces the technical burden for media owners to support multiple integrations. A media owner can now choose a single SSP to mediate programmatic auctions across multiple SSP partners, allowing them to focus on one technology partner while still benefiting from multiple monetization partners.
While Vistar and Place Exchange are working closely with various industry bodies towards a standardized protocol for OOH mediation, they shared a desire to advance solutions now that could deliver impact for OOH media owners immediately. Both platforms strongly support the development of an industry-wide standard and look forward to participating in its adoption. As the programmatic marketplace continues to develop, Vistar Media and Place Exchange are committed to delivering solutions that will drive the growth of the OOH industry.
