It’s creating its own supply-side platform, which ad tech publishers often use but don’t usually own, to maximize impressions. The publisher’s ad operations execs use tech to optimize, manage and sell ad space on Athena, its ad unit, on sites such as SB Nation and The Verge aswell as premium publishers, which make up the local and national ad marketplace, Concert. This marketplace is extended by the SSP.

Successful as Concert has been since it launched in 2016, most of the dollars spent there have come via direct deals i.e. Not programmatic. Publishers selling inventory at scale can benefit from the use of ad tech, but only if these formats are standard. Vox has taken advantage of this bespoke SSP to make any item not standardized. Vox took a risk that very few publishers have taken since the introduction of programmatic.

” Owning our technology allows for us to be masters in our domain,” stated AJ Frucci (svp media revenue, head of Concert at Vox Media). “Having an ad product that isn’t standard and relying on third-party technology puts our product roadmap at risk .”

Larger publishers recognize the importance of autonomy. Many of them are looking to take advantage of the fact that marketers are keen to reduce the number of intermediaries involved in their bids. Publishers will benefit if this is done more often.

Normally, Vox publishers put their ads up for auction via multiple SSPs. This ensures that there are many exchange “paths” to bid on the same impression and drives up the price. This can be lucrative, but it can also lead to negative effects. There are more SSPs than publishers, which means that there are more ways for them to get a cut of the winning bid. This is not to mention more ways for audience data leakage to these businesses.

Vox’s own SSP allows Vox to overcome these problems without affecting its ability make money from multiple bids for the same impression. Or at least, it does so for a significant portion of its inventory.

Vox’s SSP sells Athena ads to marketers who have bid directly from The Trade Desk. Anyone who needs a different format, or uses a demand-side platform than The Trade Desk, must continue to do so through other SSPs. It is unlikely that this will continue for too long. It is already being considered to add other formats in the future, and to introduce demand-side platforms that can compete with them.

These updates are normal. Publishers shouldn’t spend so much money on their ad tech that it is stuck in the first gear. There are better ways to sell specific formats of ad to specific advertisers than to use a proprietary SSP.

“Our SSSP is designed to create a closer connection between a publisher-led market and the advertisers it serves, at a moment when most of the ecosystem’s assets are owned by third-party middlemen who have been built to commoditize size,” stated Frucci.

Vox’s SSP is a great example of this. It’s not about competing with other SSPs, but more about being able exert more control over the sale of some of its most valuable inventory. It doesn’t need to use technology required by another company to close a deal or to pay a fee for more media impressions. Vox has the ability to set even more terms. That’s the plan. The devil is always in the details in ad tech. Specifically, whether enough marketers will listen to these terms.

On one hand, it shouldn’t be a problem if Frucci has had a positive reaction to the launch.

On the other hand, he still needs to convert that reaction into money — a difficult task in an SSP market that is as crowded and undifferentiated as it is crowded. It won’t suffice to have an exclusive ad unit. This was not Vox’s ace-in-the-hole. The SSP’s true selling point is much more fundamental.

” The reason that private marketplace purchases outperformed those made on the open exchange last fiscal year is because buyers want quality. They want to know what they are buying,” stated Frucci. Powerful .”

is required to achieve this feat with creatives that are more powerful than the programmatic pipelines.

These aren’t just new soundbites. For many years, premium publishers have been encouraging marketers to be more careful about what they purchase. Marketers didn’t listen to those concerns for a variety of reasons. They are now. They are now getting organized to track and profile people without third-party cookie. The most scalable thing they can currently test is audiences curated from publishers. Forte, Vox’s first-party solution for data, will be integrated alongside Unified ID 2.0 in the Concert SSP.

Chances that Vox’s SSP doesn’t represent a trend. This operation is not possible for many publishers. SSP CEOs can rest easy.

” I think that since advertisers raised the issues of transparency and murkiness, some disintermediation has been inevitable,” stated Dan Larden of TPA’s U.K. division. “But I see only positives from it — as the need for the buy-side to demonstrate their value for money greater than ever. The way SSPs have created demand-side services and products has been brilliant. DSPs and curated marketplaces have improved their ability to connect better with inventory that every buyer desires .”

‘Masters of our domain’: Vox Media launches its own SSP