In 2018, we released an open letter to 50 SSPs saying we’d stop buying from them if they played games that contributed to unfair, murky programmatic auctions. Almost a year to the day later in 2019, we took another huge step towards greater transparency with the unveiling of SOURCE, our effort to build a programmatic ecosystem that is accountable, addressable and aligned. And today, two weeks after celebrating SOURCE’s first birthday, we are releasing a new SOURCE Ecosystem Scorecard to continue our quest to offer unmatched transparency in the supply chain.
“With SOURCE, we set out to address some of the biggest issues facing the industry—to create an environment that is accountable and addressable, and to align the interests of brands, agencies, publishers and technology providers,” said MediaMath Founder and CEO Joe Zawadzki. “The SOURCE Ecosystem Scorecard continues to make good on that promise and is truly a Holy Grail for the industry— a configurable setting that provides brands and agencies with unparalleled data and transparency, giving them confidence in where their advertising dollars go regardless of the channel.”
The Scorecard has nine, equally weighted data signals that are split across Accountability, Addressability and Alignment and tally up to a final score across all ecosystem partners which directly leads to increased buyer value. Currently, the average score for the 82 participating SSPs is a 7 out of 10. We wouldn’t expect a perfect score of any SSP—that’s not the purpose of the Scorecard. Instead, we want the Scorecard to provide an incentive and roadmap for our partners to pursue a more transparent ecosystem in which we provide measurable value and collectively empower advertisers to make better, more informed decisions.
ACCOUNTABLE
- Fee Transparency Method: To achieve a top score, partners must provide complete transparency into supply chain costs so customers can understand the true value of every impression and create data-driven optimization strategies.
- Supply Authorization: Partners with the top scores provide impression-level seller data and publisher path transparency to inform data-driven enterprise and campaign-level SPO strategies.
- Inventory Type: Top scoring partners enable granular inventory and placement targeting, target instream instead of outstream video and define skippable vs. non-skippable video access.
ADDRESSABLE
- Fraud & Invalid Traffic: Top scoring partners for this signal have 100% of their supply filtered by White Ops for pre-bid IVT, provide free fraud protection for buyers, have no post-campaign IVT claw backs necessary and no undelivered marketing budgets due to IVT.
- Preferred Identity: Partners with top scores here will provide an increased find rate to customers by transacting on multiple common IDs and measuring consistently so they can attribute at the person and household-levels.
- Unique Channel Identifiers: Partners who exhibit this signal use appropriate identifiers for channels such as CTV and ensure omnichannel reach to audiences across devices.
ALIGNED
- Bid Feedback: This signal is focused on informing effective bid shading, ensuring advertisers pay the fair price for impressions and providing future support for auction insights reporting.
- Brain Sync: Partners who exhibit this signal at the highest level better inform seller bidding algorithms and improve supply performance toward advertiser goals by ingesting MediaMath algorithm data.
- Impression Counting Method: This signal is scored on how well partners ensure marketers pay only for impressions that have the potential to be seen, align counting methodology across the supply chain and reduce counting discrepancies.
A sample of the Scorecard:
The SOURCE Ecosystem Scorecard is available globally. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out to your Account lead.