Ep 8: Direct-sold, programmatic, remnant

One homepage. A million impressions. Three very different prices.

Inventory sells three ways. Direct-sold, programmatic, and remnant, which means the leftovers.

News.example has one million homepage impressions a month. First, direct-sold. Your sales team signs a bank for two hundred thousand impressions at, say, a twelve dollar CPM. A contract, a fixed price, often guaranteed. Second, programmatic. Software sells impressions one at a time, through auctions or private deals, via SSPs and exchanges. Third, remnant. Whatever direct didn’t take, here eight hundred thousand impressions. Most of it goes to programmatic auctions at, say, one to three dollars, so remnant and programmatic overlap. In Google Ad Manager, direct campaigns get higher priority, and house ads, your own promos, fill whatever is left.

Check your split today. What share of impressions is direct, and what share goes to auction.

Next, ad sizes that earn, and multi-size slots.