Supply-path optimization (SPO) technology may have been in the advertising marketplace for a couple of years now – but recent advances have evolved the offering, as buyers have widened their definition of path optimization.

That is according to a technology executive who has been watching the rise of SPO.

“As publishers started working with multiple SSPs, a savvy buyer could use a combination of data and research to really identify which of those SSPs, or paths to supply, was most effective for them and drive their buying towards that path,” says Kyle Dozeman, VP of advertiser solutions at PubMatic.

But Dozemand says the definition has become wider, now encompassing anything that an advertiser and agency is doing to better manage or improve their programmatic supply chain.

That includes consolidation and closer collaboration or joint innovation with SSPs.

SPO is useful because fragmentation is “terrible” for buyers, Dozeman adds.

“What I’m really talking about specifically is buying from the hundred or so SSPs that are activated by default within most of the major DSPs,” he says. “So, if you’re a buyer or an agency or advertiser and you’re buying on the a hundred or so SSPs, you really have no ability to manage or control or know what’s going on within that supply chain.”

That gives no information about fees or inventory quality. So SPO aims to “bring control back” to buyers.

This video is from a Beet.TV series titled Consolidation & The Case for Supply Chain Innovation, presented by PubMatic.   For more videos, please visit this page.