Horizon Media Strikes A Supply Path Optimization Deal With PubMatic

Horizon Media, the largest media agency in the U.S. announced a supply path optimization (SPO) partnership with PubMatic. As part of a plan to consolidate its SSP partners, it collaborated with Pubmatic to provide advertisers with a data-driven advertising scale. Buying premium media inventory has become increasingly complex across formats and devices, with new challenges in targeting fragmented audiences. This partnership will add value to Horizon Media clients’ direct, transparent, and simplified access to high-value audiences and premium inventory, including CTV, at an unprecedented scale.

The consolidation plan will help Horizon Media to create a smaller decision tree that will in turn aid to make faster, better auctions. Jesse Fisher, SVP Programmatic & Data, Horizon Media said, 

“Horizon’s relationship with PubMatic gives our clients access to audiences at scale across channels, including CTV, and they are aligned with our own innovation to ensure our success and leadership in the future of digital advertising.”

“Horizon Media now offers a unique combination of tools for increased cost-savings, along with access to new and exclusive product offerings with PubMatic.”

Horizon’s clients who purchase open-auction inventory through its HX trade desk will be able to use PubMatic’s intelligent bid optimization to automatically move to spend to inventory that maximizes the advertiser’s return on marketing investments. PubMatic will automate the optimization of open exchange media buying all in one place, providing better efficiency, insight, and performance for Horizon Media’s clients.

Publisher inventory can be optimized more granularly through PubMatic’s ROI Sync, for instance. A tracking pixel compares the buyer’s historical performance data with conversion data. The advertiser’s bid is then adjusted in real-time based on publisher conversions.

Adexchanger quoted Fisher, “PubMatic will look at historical performance at the publisher ID and match that up against clearing price and win rate to make sure that, if they adjust your bids, they’re not going to hurt your ability to win those impressions.”

Horizon is also consolidating its SSPs because it no longer sees the need for so many and streamlines its operations.

Several SSPs tend to promise 90-95% US audiences reach, which results in a lot of redundancy. SSPs have different value propositions, which makes it difficult for the buy-side to understand. Fisher said to Adexchanger, Better inventory packaging made PubMatic stand out for a supply path optimization deal.

“[PubMatic] uses supply-side signals that are available to everyone, but they use them in very smart ways to build new products, like green media auction packages and PMPs.”

Furthermore, Horizon expects to become less dependent on third-party data partners by utilizing PubMatic’s data products such as ROI Sync and Identity Hub ID management tools. Kyle Dozeman, Chief Revenue Officer, Americas, at PubMatic said, 

“Horizon Media is a great partner in driving efficiency, transparency, and innovation to enable the development of digital advertising and its benefits for brands, publishers, and consumers.”

“Their media buying scope combined with our omnichannel quality and scale provides one of the most robust media opportunities on the open internet for both brands and publishers. We’re looking forward to delivering more custom capabilities that further improve the media buying process, deliver deeper insights, and ultimately create more value.”

Interesting Read: The Journey From Deterministic To Probabilistic Marketing