Direct Media Transactions Need to Be Far More Direct: Here’s How To Make it Work

Imagine you want to buy a pair of pants on Amazon, but you can’t directly discover the pants Amazon has in stock. So, instead of directly finding, purchasing, and receiving a receipt for the pants, you have to send a message to Amazon telling the company about the pants you want. Then, Amazon has to return a message indicating the products in stock that might match your desired purchase. Next, you have to send an order, Amazon has to create an order in its own system, and the workflows need to be reconciled to ensure you get your pants and Amazon gets paid. 

Obviously, an ecommerce business would never survive if buying products on its marketplace were so difficult. But this unimaginably complex process is how direct media transactions still take place. Without a single interface at the point of sale to observe publisher product catalogs, query available products, make purchases, and automatically generate invoices upon the fulfillment of ad requests, agencies and publishers are left to settle direct deals manually via email like it’s 1999. 

Direct media transactions need to become far more direct for the sake of every party in the digital advertising ecosystem. 

Let’s consider the status quo and its ramifications, why now is prime time for a better way to orchestrate direct deals, and what a better system would look like.

How direct media transactions work

The direct media sale workflow requires a great deal of redundant data entry. Buyers create requests for proposals, stipulating details like the amount they want to spend and their preferred date range, and send them to individual publishers. Publishers then send relevant details- the specific ad placements, their prices, and availability for one or more dates- to the buy side, and the two parties need to correspond to come to an agreement on the exact items the advertiser will ultimately buy. 

This involves manually determining product combinations possibly in the hundreds of thousands to land on a deal. And then, when the buyer and seller reach a deal, the publisher still needs to ensure it provides confirmation and sends an invoice to the advertiser when the ad they have bought is served.

This manual communication of inventory and pricing details, campaign line items and placement details, and invoices makes direct deals inefficient and expensive. Manual data entry introduces errors. Publishers cannot maximize demand because the process is so cumbersome. Buyers are not able to easily view and select media opportunities and create campaign orders, and instead, agencies rely on the ad giants or the programmatic market for ease of use. The inefficiency of the process raises costs for all involved.

As a result, direct deals, with all their benefits — including revenue maximization and control for publishers as well as preferred conditions, premium audiences, and impression guarantees for buyers — fall to the wayside. 

But the status quo cannot hold much longer.

Now is the right time for a programmatic alternative

Historically, buyers sensing the logistical challenges of direct deals have instead relied on the programmatic open market. In lieu of asking an agency to correspond with dozens of publishers about possible direct deals, advertisers just turn to the giant platforms or rely on programmatic algorithms to optimize media allocation.

This efficiency-oriented solution was the precise promise of the soon-to-be-sunsetted cookie. Third-party cookies create a common unit across different publishers’ inventory. They allow advertisers to select for audiences without regard for the content environments in which their media shows up — and therefore without having to correspond with different publishers to manage deals.

But the status quo is shifting. Third-party cookies are going away. Advertisers and publishers are tired of exorbitant intermediary fees that diminish publisher revenue and the amount of audience exposure buyers get for their ad spend. Brand safety issues and the renewed focus on first-party audience connections are shining a spotlight on the value of direct deals.

But to make direct deals scaleable, the digital media ecosystem needs a transaction path that has the efficiency of programmatic — especially the ability to survey products, inventory, and pricing across publishers — with the preferred conditions, guaranteed impressions, and brand safety of direct.

What a better system for direct deals looks like

Advertisers’ point-of-sale solutions should be able to provide a single destination for deal origination across publishers’ product catalogs. 

The planner should be able to see, in their own buying system, pricing, availability, and media products as they plan the campaign. From there, the order can be created, and there should be a direct connection between the publisher’s catalog and the advertiser’s order, eliminating inaccuracies and laborious reconciliation. Availability should already be verified when the advertiser places an order. And when a campaign gets executed on the ad server, an invoice should automatically go back to the buying platform for reconciliation. 

For most standard ad opportunities, advertisers and publishers should never need to exchange phone calls to understand what inventory is available because product catalogs should be available in real-time in the buying system.

This would provide an alternative to programmatic (with its high intermediary fees and brand safety woes), allow publishers to increase demand and maximize revenue, and help advertisers secure more transparent deals to reach premium first-party audiences. 

If the adtech industry can help publishers make it easier for advertisers to buy direct, they’ll spend more money, too, laying the foundation for a more sustainable future for the open web. Amazon did not take over ecommerce by making it hard to find pants.