OpenPath is a buy- and sell-side solution enabling direct connections between advertisers and a publisher’s ad server. With OpenPath, publishers are seeing higher fill rates and more demand, while advertisers benefit from higher win rates and cost-efficiencies for their campaigns. Now both sides of the advertising aisle can benefit from a high-trust marketplace where each can find fair value exchange to help grow their businesses.
The programmatic marketplace has become quite complex — largely due to the highly convoluted nature of its supply chain. The path an ad takes to reach its intended audience on a publisher’s platform includes a plethora of routes. In fact, an advertiser can buy a publisher's inventory through an average of 600 different supply paths, and that number has grown dramatically in recent years.1
This paradox of choice is often cause for high extraction and low value add, opaque auction mechanics, low and obfuscated signal, and bid duplication, among other detrimental elements to the exchange. OpenPath is a remedy that aims to simplify the buy/sell transaction. After all, good advertising at its core is a simple transaction between an advertiser and a publisher that is transparent and fair.
Get to know how the direct integrations between the buy and sell sides within The Trade Desk’s platform are helping premium publishers work toward increasing their revenue potential and outcomes for advertisers.
Get to know the product:
How OpenPath works
Benefits for publishers
OpenPath uses a direct integration approach to shorten the distance between our platform and your websites, Connected TV (CTV) apps, mobile apps, and other properties. Many of the world’s leading media brands — including The Weather Company, Dotdash Meredith, Vizio, McClatchy, and more — have integrated their advertising inventory with OpenPath.
OpenPath is not a supply-side platform or yield-management solution, and The Trade Desk does not own or represent media. OpenPath is designed to help create a fairer and more transparent marketplace that helps increase value for both advertisers and publishers.
We designed OpenPath to integrate with each publisher’s preferred transparent demand solutions, using either the IAB’s OpenRTB Specification and Standard Adapter or the popular open-source header bidding platform from Prebid. This lowers the barrier to entry and makes it easy for sellers to participate.
While OpenPath is not a yield-management solution, it can help publishers grow their businesses and gain valuable insights that help them make better pricing and yield-management decisions.
OpenPath publishers experience three main benefits:
- Higher bid volume: Helps you attract more demand from advertisers seeking premium ad inventory.
- True price discovery: Delivers direct visibility into bid data, revealing the true market for your inventory.
- Operational efficiencies: Helps simplify your ad revenue operations through streamlined workflows, approvals, and reconciliation.
OpenPath can help you increase revenue opportunities and create enhanced value for your advertising partners. When programmatic transactions offer more trust and transparency with rich data signals, both the buyer and seller can benefit.
Publisher success story:
Vizio, a leading U.S. TV brand with an entertainment platform featuring more than 300 CTV channels, used OpenPath to capitalize on its advertiser demand. Vizio was able to offer advertisers a more direct path to buy ads, sharply increasing their fill rates and revenue across programmatic CTV by 39%.2
Are you a publisher who’s ready to integrate OpenPath? Click here to learn more and get in touch with us. Already a client of The Trade Desk? Contact your account representative to get started.
Benefits for advertisers
The entire programmatic ecosystem benefits from a more direct path to supply. While OpenPath benefits publishers in the form of an objective and transparent supply path for their inventory, it also benefits advertisers in the form of efficiency.
In programmatic advertising, milliseconds matter. Using direct connections, OpenPath shrinks the distance between our platform and the publisher inventory we bid on. When one or more “hops” in the programmatic marketplace are removed, your campaigns have a greater likelihood of winning the impression opportunities you value most. That means you can reach your high-value audiences in highly sought-after destinations and moments of engagement.
Transparency is a benefit too. Advertisers often ask: “What specific inventory did I purchase and where?” While the programmatic supply chain is at times opaque, OpenPath publishers send bid requests with rich data signals and content- and placement-level contextual insights that can benefit buyers. You can use this information to better value the impressions you buy against specific campaigns goals, then bid accordingly.
Advertisers are seeing success:
We conducted a study spanning dozens of advertisers in various verticals. The findings were clear: Campaigns achieved consistently higher win rates through our platform’s direct connections to publisher inventory. These advertisers’ campaigns saw win rates 3x higher than campaigns not using the direct connection.3
When agency Ovative Group used OpenPath to reach inventory from leading premium publishers across open and private marketplaces, they were able to win more impresses at a lower cost. The team saw a 47% improvement in cost per acquisition (CPA) efficiency as well as higher win rates and lower CPMs when compared with other supply paths.4
Embracing a more direct supply chain
We know that our buyers want to reach their audiences on the best premium content available across the open internet, with as much efficiency as possible. And our integrated publisher partners want access to aggregate demand from advertisers who value premium content and ad experiences.
OpenPath brings the supply and demand sides closer together, enabling each to find fair value in a transparent marketplace that can help grow their businesses.
Learn more about OpenPath here. If you’re ready to get started, contact us or reach out to your representative at The Trade Desk.
This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance.
Sources:
1. Sincera. Average number of supply paths, top 25k ad-supported publishers (5/1/23 – 11/1/24)
2. The Trade Desk, platform data. *Represents Vizio’s results on The Trade Desk’s platform during the period from February 1, 2024 through August 31, 2024 as compared to the period from July 1, 2023 through January 31, 2024.
3. The Trade Desk, platform data, October 2024.
4. The Trade Desk, platform data.