# S1 E4 SLAP

S1 E4 SLAP 

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the middleman. This is episode three, a bonus episode. This episode is going to be about slap Todd. Tell us what that means. Well, I prefer the phrase slap happy. I think it's a, a, a more interesting way of describing what's going on. Slap, um, which I totally want to gro in as I explain what this reference to someone said. 

[00:00:24] That there's news recently, this week of Trade Desk has produced this premium site list, this premium internet quote unquote, and um, and explains for those who can see the video, the background that Tom has, which is, uh, an image of. Death Star shooting Alderon, where the Death star is, trade Desk and Alderon is, is labeled publishers that don't integrate UID two. 

[00:00:44] I've seen another version of this meme, which is Trade Desk is the Death Star and Alderon as the open web. Um, you know, is, and so the idea here, it, someone said, oh, it's Sightless as a product. And I said, it's slap and IW and I groaned ought to be out loud when I read that. I'm like, we [00:01:00] do not need another acronym here. 

[00:01:02] This is, and and hopefully this does not take off as, as an acronym. That's okay. Yeah, four letter acronyms don't work as well as three letter acronyms. So, exactly. So slap, well actually I kind of, I think it was, as you know, someone said S-L-A-P-P or something. Anyway, it could be a five liter acronym, which would be even worse. 

[00:01:16] Um, and so there, there's this buzz this news around. This premium site list, which was produced in part from, uh, inputs, from, from since, uh, a, a, a company that provides information data filters on publishers. And so to me, the biggest thing was. Site lists or the idea that that DSPs don't have preferred partner. 

[00:01:42] Preferred publisher, preferred supply list is kind of silly as someone who ran a DSP for a decade, um, called zanta a great product. Everyone, it's still around. It's, it's owned and operated by, um, Outbrain courage. Everyone who needs the DS P to, to sign up for it. Um, it it, as someone around a [00:02:00] DSP. I, I can tell you every DSP has a list of preferred publishers, preferred slide partners, recommended default list of, of publishers for campaigns. 

[00:02:10] This is, this is not a new thing or news. So I'm, you know, publishers thought this didn't exist. I'm here to tell you it's existed for a long time. Well, if it's not news, um, is it, is this analogous to how. You know, in the mobile world you have, uh, you know, Android has a feature for like, you know, two years and then all of a sudden the market leader Apple comes in with their product marketing team and says, we have a new copy and paste feature. 

[00:02:37] Or we have, you know, we have some, some new thing that's been around for a while, but now you should actually take a look at it. 'cause now it's serious. 'cause the market leader is doing it for the first time in a serious way. It's all new. It's the best it could ever be, you know. Is that sort of what's happening with the trade desk? 

[00:02:55] Like what did, what did they build here? Is it, is it it would, started out it was just a hundred sites and [00:03:00] then I heard 500. What is it? Well, now it's, it's, you know, and, and, uh, I want to call out, oh, and, and I should give reference to, uh, props to Johannes Barns is where we got the image from, uh, at Johannes Barns on, uh, Twitter. 

[00:03:12] And then, uh, another good follow programmatic 1 0 1. Uh, has has been looking into this. And at first, you know, when, when, um, I believe it's a, he, uh, when he looked into it, he said, oh, there's, it's not 100. And he posted the 500 that he could find. And it turns out as he's looked more into it, it's 20,000 is on this list. 

[00:03:32] And so that's sort of like, you know, and, and, and from my experience at, at Samantha, we would see between a hundred, 125,000 domains a month across the campaigns, uh, active campaigns. That's a. That's sort of a, I think a good and ad sense supposedly has a million publishers globally to give some perspective on, on the scale of these things. 

[00:03:51] And so a hundred thousand publishers is a lot. So, so basically if you assume Trade Desk is kind of seeing the same amount, a hundred thousand, 125,000, they're kind of [00:04:00] pointing out their top, their top 20%, right? The 80 20 rule, top 20% are, you know, even within Zanta probably ran 80% of the impressions, maybe even 90% of the impressions. 

[00:04:08] Um, and so I think what they're, it's really not as restrictive as it might otherwise seem. And really when you think about it from a DSP standpoint, a hundred thousand publishers and most campaigns don't. But if I had, let's say a typical campaign might see 10,000 publishers. If I had a $50,000 budget for a campaign, pretty typical, that's $5 per. 

[00:04:31] Publisher. If it's 10,000 publishers, it's a thousand publishers, it's, it's $50 and in a month, and $50 isn't a lot. It's, it's not, you're not getting a lot of signal. It's hard for, for ML systems or other systems that are using signals to optimize against. Yeah. And so there's this real challenge about how do I kind of narrow down as quickly as possible to the right target list so I can start doing meaningful optimizations? 

[00:04:54] Well, yeah, so that was sort of for me when I was in the retail media world, like starting in 2018, [00:05:00] I. Site lists were kind of the bane of our existence. Um, whether it was a whitelist or a blacklist or a block list, you know, the agencies wanted to see that there was a robust list that was being used. They wanted to review that, but it was very manually done. 

[00:05:13] And the, and even if it was manual or machine learning, it was all done on whether, you know, you, it would, the site was getting clicks or the site was, um, you know, something that kept our viewability percentage above 70%. Um, and neither of those metrics are really that great. Um, and, and you know, our first couple of episodes of the Middlemen was all about the MFAs that gamed that system. 

[00:05:39] And, and I think, you know, one of the things that, uh, when, when, you know, we're getting into the weeds of, of really the mechanics of, of all the advertising here, but as a, as an advertiser or a trader using a DSP. Uh, our biggest ask for every new user, for every new campaign was at, at some, I should say, well, what's your recommended [00:06:00] site list? 

[00:06:00] And it's a cold start problem, right? The best campaigns were campaigns that ran for longer than a month. That ran for a lot more times so that the system could optimize, would actually get enough signals to find the best publishers and placements and, and what have you. And so if any, you know, I do think there's a market opportunity for companies. 

[00:06:19] To provide recommended target lists to traders and, and media planners so that, you know, they can, they can have a more targeted list to start. Because if I can narrow it down upfront, I can start, if I can spend $500 on a publisher, a thousand dollars on a publisher, I'm gonna get some real signals and then the system can optimize. 

[00:06:39] Was it, you know, against, 'cause even within a publisher, I say, oh, maybe $50 is enough. Yeah. But that publisher probably has hundreds of placements. Yeah. Suddenly at $50, 50 cents per placement. That's not a lot of ads. And so you, you really have these opportunities where if you can, you can find a better target list from a site standpoint is, and as the world moves away from audiences and cookies into [00:07:00] more site and, and domain specific targeting, I think there's big opportunities for companies in Sarah Mode, IVD, whatever DV, to, to not necessarily be in the block list, like block offensive site or problematic sites. 

[00:07:14] But instead be proactive and create lists, targeting lists that, that these traders and media planners can use. I actually don't get to big opportunity. So as a DS former DSP guy, uh, I would say I would've welcomed these as partners, right? That, that, that, and I think most DSPs are, um, open to working with third party lists. 

[00:07:34] And so I do think we're gonna find this idea of. Site list metadata. Someone said that since actually doesn't provide lists. Yes, I, I understand that since is really in, in the metadata business. Um, but my point was that, you know, the, effectively what they're helping someone do is build a list, a targeting list. 

[00:07:51] That's the practical thing that a media buyer needs to run a campaign. I'm just happy to see some transparency in that the, the [00:08:00] publishers are listed at all because I think it, you know, we had gotten so far into the world of audience targeting. Where the publisher wasn't even part of the conversation anymore. 

[00:08:08] Um, and I think that the world of CTV is making it so the publishers are kind of front and center. Again, this is, you know, to some extent doing the same thing for the web, which could be, you know, could be helpful at least for some of those, those larger publishers that maybe were hit with, you know, sledge hammers of keyword targeting, you know, the premium news sites and things like that. 

[00:08:29] We're, we're not getting the money they should have. Is So do you think it's a positive for the, for the industry? Uh, I think it's, it's sort of a, it's where the industry's moving. Yeah. Regardless, right, which is, is I have to be more conscious about publishers and context and content and less focused on audience. 

[00:08:47] I think that's just where the world is, is going. And I, I think that, that as the media buyers and planners and traders start realizing that they have to, to think about this. Yeah, I think it is. It'll be [00:09:00] interesting. I net positive, I don't know, but it, it, it's a shift to your point of we're, we're, this is part of that movement away from audiences is domains. 

[00:09:08] I think the other thing out of this is if you're a publisher or an SSP or supply side person, you're, you're trying to say, well, how do I get more from A DSP? How do I get on that premium list? How do we get on the default list? Well, it's actually, it's not about hiring a bunch of biz dev people rainmakers to go call on the, the, the DSPs. 

[00:09:24] What you really need are great. Ad ops people, hub ops people. 'cause the easier, technically you can, I can work with you. I'm A DSP, if I can work with you as a publisher Yeah. The more likely you're gonna end up on that list. You say, you know, the, the Johannes barn of UID publishers who didn't have UID installed, UID two installed, um, are an example of, and, and it makes total sense trade. 

[00:09:45] This is gonna work with publishers that support their data standards. And if I'm A DSP, I'm gonna work more with publishers who do a great job of reporting information back to me and, and work well and everything just flows. It's just friction's bad. So if you can eliminate [00:10:00] friction, you're gonna get more money from the DSP. 

[00:10:03] So UBS invest in, call it DSP ops or, or supply ops or programmatic ops, and make it easy for these platforms to spend money with you, technically speaking. Great. Well, I think we'll end this on just a congratulations to, um, the architecture team, ad tech, God, and, uh. Uh, Jeremy Bloom, uh, at Attic Forum. They are now the Empire. 

[00:10:30] They have all merged together and, uh, you know, if we'll use, use the screen behind me one last time to analogize. Um, we are now part of the Rebel Alliance, US and Paul Govins with his forthcoming CTV podcast. Uh, you know, we are the upstarts trying to continue the fight to, uh, to bring explanation and clarity into the ad tech world. 

[00:10:53] So. We're excited to see all the changes that have been happening and congrats again to all those guys. And we'll be [00:11:00] back with retail media very soon, so soon, mighty. We might even record it right after this. So thanks for listening and uh, have a great weekend. Until next time.