A Publisher's Guide to Preferred Deals: Pricing, Tips, and More

If you're someone who is getting started with programmatic, there is a lot to experiment with and even a lot to digest. The fundamental objective of this post is to make you understand the very basics of preferred deals and to help you with one of the most controversial topics, i.e., setting up pricing for your preferred or PMP deals (the key points to keep in mind). So, let us go ahead and see how we can create preferred deals in Google Ad Manager. 

How to Get Started with Preferred Deals in Google Ad Manager?

Both the programmatic guaranteed and non-guaranteed proposals negotiate the same way. Both parties need to first agree upon the campaign details,  following which you request acceptance of the bid from the buyer. Once accepted, the proposal is finalized, and Ad Manager creates corresponding delivery line items.

To Set up a Preferred Deal:

1. Go ahead and create a proposal.
2. Add a proposal line item.
3. Select Preferred deal as the line item type.
4. Ensure you enter a value for "Estimated quantity" that reflects a realistic expectation for delivery. This value can later be used to monitor and troubleshoot the campaigns.
5. You can negotiate the same way as guaranteed campaigns:

• Request acceptance to finalize the deal
• Send for review if you still want to negotiate terms and aren't ready to close the deal

Preferred Deals: Pricing, Tips, and More for Publishers

One of the most sought after topics about preferred deals are to understand the optimal pricing that publishers should ask from buyers. There is no fixed formula to this; thus, both parties have to finalize a mutually agreed price that benefits them in the long term. Some of the tips to ensure that your preferred deal pricing is taken care of include:-

Setting up a minimum CPM floor price: It is always advised to set a minimum floor price even for your preferred deals campaign. You can set the base price depending on the bidding rates of your other demand partners.

Ask for a minimum spend commitment: You can always ask your buyer to commit to a minimum spend on your preferred deals inventory. By doing so, you will have an approximate forecast of your revenue projections and can further optimize your preferred dealer campaigns.

Optimize your pricing based on location:  if you have a good traffic Inventory in the European market, you should try to set preferred deals with DSPs like Adform, who are pretty strong in that market. Your pricing should be optimized for the highest CPM, but it should also ensure that the overall fill rates are a hundred percent.

Hire Salespeople: One of your best bets should be to hire salespeople who are good at both programmatic guaranteed and PMPs. Both PMPs and PGs essentially require some sort of direct interaction and meeting with a salesperson and buying dinners, drinks, sports tickets, etc., to actually perform well.

 Keep an eye on the open market: One of the best possible ways to generate high revenue-generating PMP deals is to keep a continuous watch on the open market and see which advertisers are massively buying your inventory over a period of 3 to 6 months. Your sales team should target these advertisers and try to convince them of preferred and programmatic guaranteed deals. 

Depending on your site, quality of conversions, advertiser demand, and rates, PMPs should generally be priced at 1.5-2.5X higher than open auction CPMs. However, it is you who is the best judge of your inventory, so just experiment with what works and what buyers are willing to pay. A piece of good advice is to always be on board an SSP that is strong in your region.

While setting up Preferred deals, one of the crucial aspects is to understand the priority and line items of preferred deals which are illustrated in this article.