Programmatic Guaranteed, Preferred Deal, Private Auction or Open Auction: Which Deal to Ask For

Who gets an impression first?

When a page loads, the seller's ad server offers the slot to its buyers in a fixed order of priority. A deal type is, above all, a place in that line. The order below is the one the IAB's 2013 paper on programmatic transactions calls typical (IAB, 2013). Google Ad Manager describes the same top of the line, guaranteed and then preferred deals, and lets a private auction either go first or compete with the open auction (Preferred Deals overview; Private Auctions overview).

The IAB puts it plainly: guaranteed deals "have the highest priority within programmatic transactions equal to direct sales", and "most publishers place their Invitation-Only Auction above the Open Auction in priority" (IAB, Programmatic and Automation - The Publishers' Perspective). Google's Ad Manager Help gives preferred deals "a fixed priority value that is typically higher than Private Auction and the Open Auction", with Sponsorship and Standard line items generally serving ahead of them (Preferred Deals overview). Those two are the line item types a programmatic guaranteed deal runs on (Ways of transacting in Ad Manager).

What are the four programmatic deal types?

The IAB's 2013 paper sorts every programmatic sale by three questions: is the inventory reserved, is the price fixed or set by auction, and how many buyers may take part (IAB, 2013). Each answer pattern is one deal type. The names differ by platform, which is why the second column matters when you talk to a seller.

Reserved inventory is ad space "put aside for a specific advertiser for an agreed price", and a fixed price is a flat price the buyer pays "rather than the highest bidder in an auction environment" (IAB, 2013). A floor is the lowest price a seller will accept in an auction. A deal ID is "a unique string of characters that are used as an identifier for buyers and sellers", passed in the bid request (IAB, 2013); OpenRTB's guidance says to treat it as a "targeting token" (OpenRTB implementation guidance, 7.3).

Which deal should a buyer ask for?

Start from what the campaign cannot do without: a fixed number of impressions, a known price, or access to a seller's inventory before the open market sees it. Each deal trades one of these for flexibility.

What does a deal look like in a bid request?

In OpenRTB 2.6, the protocol exchanges use to ask buyers for bids, every deal on an impression sits in a pmp object, the "private marketplace container for direct deals" (OpenRTB 2.6). Despite the name, it carries guaranteed and preferred deals too, not only private auctions. Here is one impression offered under three deals; the IDs, seat and prices are made-up examples, not market rates.

"pmp": {
  "private_auction": 1,
  "deals": [
    { "id": "pg-sports-q4", "guar": 1, "at": 3,
      "bidfloor": 18.00, "bidfloorcur": "USD",
      "wseat": ["seat-1234"] },
    { "id": "pd-sports-firstlook", "at": 3,
      "bidfloor": 12.00, "wseat": ["seat-1234"] },
    { "id": "pa-sports-invite", "at": 1,
      "bidfloor": 6.50,
      "wseat": ["seat-1234", "seat-5678"],
      "wadomain": ["example.com"] }
  ]
}

Two of those fields are why a deal can quietly fail. If your seat is not in wseat, your bids are not allowed. If you bid on a fixed-price deal below its bidfloor, the bid does not count: Google's help says the impression "may become available on the Private Auctions or Open Auction" when the buyer "fails to place a valid bid above the negotiated CPM fixed price" (Preferred Deals overview).

What to send a seller when you ask for a deal

A seller can only set up a deal your platform will see if it has these details. Copy the form, fill in the right column, and send it with your first message. Before you send it, check that the seller is listed as authorized in the site's ads.txt; our guide to ads.txt and sellers.json shows how.

Index Exchange tells its sellers to "share the deal ID with your buyer so they can respond to your bid requests" (Index Exchange). For a preferred deal or a private auction, add the deal ID to your platform and then to the line item's targeting. A guaranteed deal works differently in Display & Video 360: you accept it in Negotiations, and its insertion order is set up for you (DV360 Help). In Display & Video 360, a line item with no inventory source targeting buys "open auction inventory on all enabled exchanges by default", and: "Deals are only targeted when you add the deal itself or deal group to targeting." (DV360 Help). The deal ID itself "cannot be changed once saved", so copy it exactly (DV360 Help).

Sources

• IAB, Programmatic and Automation - The Publishers' Perspective (September 2013, PDF)
• IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB 2.6 specification
• IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB implementation guidance, section 7.3 PMP and Direct Deals
• Google Ad Manager Help, Ways of transacting in Ad Manager
• Google Ad Manager Help, Programmatic Guaranteed vs. Preferred Deals
• Google Ad Manager Help, Preferred Deals overview
• Google Ad Manager Help, Private Auctions overview
• Google Ad Manager Help, Auction model
• Display & Video 360 Help, Programmatic Guaranteed deals
• Display & Video 360 Help, Add an inventory source
• Display & Video 360 Help, Inventory source targeting
• Microsoft Learn, Programmatic Guaranteed Deals for Bidders
• Microsoft Learn, DV360 buying guide
• Index Exchange Knowledge Base, Create a programmatic guaranteed deal (open beta)