Buying more transparent, cost-effective inventory for clients
A long-standing agency partner of The Trade Desk, Goodway Group differentiates itself with its supply chain optimization (SPO). Through continuous analysis of the deal path to ad inventory, Goodway Group leverages cutting-edge solutions to boost media buying strategies and tactics. The agency’s focus is on ensuring clients get the right ad at the right moment, displayed within the best content available on the open internet.
But doing this at scale and in a cost-efficient manner is no easy feat. So when Goodway Group brought the opportunity to test Blue Lists to one of its fast-casual restaurant chain clients, it rose to the challenge.
Delivering enhanced efficiency with Blue Lists and the Sellers and Publishers 500+
Goodway Group combined its first-party deals with our Sellers and Publishers 500+ to create its own Blue List: a self-curated, custom client marketplace offering seamless access to premium advertising inventory across the open internet. Creating its own marketplace enabled Goodway Group to build on the omnichannel scale of Sellers and Publishers 500+ while prioritizing its own publisher relationships and unique data.
With this new marketplace established in Kokai, Goodway Group launched an omnichannel Blue List test for the fast-casual restaurant chain across connected TV (CTV), video, and audio to understand cost-efficiencies and performance benefits. The team established a robust A/B testing structure to understand how its Blue List scales and performs relative to its existing media buying strategies and industry benchmarks.
Performance data showed that cost per mille (CPM) reduced by 18% for both the CTV and audio campaigns. On CTV, it saw a 25% decrease in cost per unique household, and audio also saw a 27% reduction in cost per completed view (CPCV). This shows that while costs decreased with its Blue List, Goodway Group and its client didn’t have to sacrifice scale by still driving incremental reach.
Goodway Group used our enhanced inventory metrics and controls to assess the quality of inventory within its Blue List. Results revealed that nearly 50% of impressions within its Blue List can be classified as impressions with transparent content. These are defined by a certain level of content signal information availability — such as genre, show series or title, and production quality — which can be used to decision and report on.
Lastly, in line with its key initiative, Goodway Group wanted to gather inventory in the most direct way possible. To quantify this, the team examined the number of hops in the supply chain of each delivered impression. On the Blue List campaign, 94% was on one-hop inventory, 17% above the industry benchmark of 77%. This highlights Blue Lists as a key tool to receive inventory directly from a desired publisher.
Goodway Group’s proprietary strategic marketplace, contained within its Blue List, helped its client improve campaign performance by giving it access to a more efficient, high-quality supply chain. The agency plans to evolve this test in Kokai to further enhance the efficiency of its premium ad inventory buys for its clients.
“Goodway Group has been relentless in our pursuit of perfecting supply chain optimization, ensuring advertisers access the cleanest inventory at the best prices. It’s our way of driving media efficiency to deliver meaningful results. Achieving this requires collaborating with cutting-edge partners, and The Trade Desk consistently brings us real solutions to make it possible.”
Stephani Estes
Chief Media Officer, Goodway Group
“By combining The Trade Desk’s new inventory tools like the Sellers and Publishers 500+ and OpenPath with their own supply path optimization efforts, Goodway Group has created a custom Blue List marketplace to pioneer more effective buying paths to the premium open internet. This strategic partnership empowers Goodway Group to deliver ads more transparently on content directly from the publisher, raising the bar for performance. Goodway Group’s advertisers see better results and publishers see more dollars in working media — it’s been a true win-win scenario.”
Jed Dederick
Chief Revenue Officer, The Trade Desk
Want to learn more about how you can use the Sellers and Publishers 500+ marketplace and Blue Lists to help you get more value and impact from your programmatic campaigns? Contact us or speak directly with your account manager at The Trade Desk today.