Supply-Side Targeting Now Captures 37% of Programmatic Spend as Buyers Flee DSP Constraints
The migration of targeting decisions from demand-side platforms to supply-side platforms has moved beyond the experiment stage. Now it is becoming a structural overhaul of how programmatic advertising works.
New data tracking exchange activity from 2022 through 2025 shows that more than a third of all programmatic spend now flows through supply-side targeting mechanisms, with connected television leading the charge at an even higher rate. But that comes amid buyer frustration with the infrastructure limitations of DSPs, which cannot process the full universe of available ad requests.
“It’s not just a trend, but buyers are getting closer to the supply side to apply their targeting,” said Tyler Romasco, EVP, commercial, OpenX, in this video interview with Beet.TV at the Beet Retreat LA event. “In 2025, what we saw is 37% of all spend that goes through the OpenX marketplace is now leveraging supply side targeting.”
Why DSP infrastructure is pushing buyers upstream
The technical case for supply-side targeting rests on two pillars: scale and signal fidelity. DSPs face queries-per-second constraints that prevent them from evaluating every available impression, meaning buyers never see the full picture of what they could purchase.
“Traditionally in this industry, when we look at DSPs and their ability to do targeting, they’re limited by their infrastructure,” Romasco said. “They can’t see all of the supply available to them, and so they can’t process all those ad requests to determine what they should buy on behalf of an agency or an advertiser.”
Moving targeting upstream could remove those bottlenecks. “One of the benefits of supply side targeting is those infrastructure constraints don’t exist,” he said. “Buyers for the first time can see all available supply to them to determine what they want to buy.”
CTV is moving faster than any other channel
Connected television is accelerating the supply-side shift more rapidly than display or mobile. According to OpenX’s data, 51% of CTV marketplace spend already uses supply-side targeting, compared with 37% across all formats.
The reasons are specific to television’s complexity. CTV programmatic buying involves inventory-share agreements, intermediaries rebroadcasting supply, and opaque paths between buyer and publisher. Moving closer to the supply side helps buyers understand what they are actually purchasing.
“In CTV, we’re seeing the shift to supply around quality, because buyers are better able to infer it there,” Romasco said. “The second thing we’re seeing is traditionally in TV, the way we do our targeting is around content. So the closer you get to supply, there’s more content signal available like genre or rating or language.”
IAB projects US digital video ad spend will exceed $80 billion in 2026, growing 11% year over year, while eMarketer forecasts CTV upfront spending will surpass primetime linear TV upfront spending for the first time.
Appointment viewing targets the living room moment
OpenX is packaging its supply-side capabilities into a product called TV by OpenX, designed to help buyers reach what the company calls “appointment viewing” moments. The concept combines three conditions: glass-on-wall viewing on a large screen, multiple household members watching together, and content the viewer actively chose.
“It’s the combination of bringing all those things together that create the most powerful moment for an advertiser,” Romasco said.
In practice, buyers can activate three targeting layers through deal IDs: attention-based targeting measuring user engagement, co-viewing likelihood indicating multiple viewers in the room, and content signals including genre, live versus on-demand, and show-level data.
Turnkey activation through existing workflows
OpenX launched attention targeting for CTV in March 2026 through a partnership with TVision, enabling real-time activation against high-attention inventory. The company says its CTV footprint spans more than 242 million monthly unique US viewers.
Romasco emphasized that buyers do not need to overhaul their operations to use the capabilities. “This is already available today. It’s in the platform. You don’t need to change workflows,” he said. “These are typical standard buyer workflows that they’re used to, of deal IDs with the right targeting applied to it.”
The underlying enabler, he argued, is the proximity to publishers that supply-side targeting provides. “It’s when you have better signal and you get closer to publishers and you get closer to your SSP that this targeting truly gets unlocked,” Romasco said.
The migration of targeting decisions from demand-side platforms to supply-side platforms has moved beyond the experiment stage. Now it is becoming a structural overhaul of how programmatic advertising works.
New data tracking exchange activity from 2022 through 2025 shows that more than a third of all programmatic spend now flows through supply-side targeting mechanisms, with connected television leading the charge at an even higher rate. But that comes amid buyer frustration with the infrastructure limitations of DSPs, which cannot process the full universe of available ad requests.
“It’s not just a trend, but buyers are getting closer to the supply side to apply their targeting,” said Tyler Romasco, EVP, commercial, OpenX, in this video interview with Beet.TV at the Beet Retreat LA event. “In 2025, what we saw is 37% of all spend that goes through the OpenX marketplace is now leveraging supply side targeting.”
Why DSP infrastructure is pushing buyers upstream
The technical case for supply-side targeting rests on two pillars: scale and signal fidelity. DSPs face queries-per-second constraints that prevent them from evaluating every available impression, meaning buyers never see the full picture of what they could purchase.
“Traditionally in this industry, when we look at DSPs and their ability to do targeting, they’re limited by their infrastructure,” Romasco said. “They can’t see all of the supply available to them, and so they can’t process all those ad requests to determine what they should buy on behalf of an agency or an advertiser.”
Moving targeting upstream could remove those bottlenecks. “One of the benefits of supply side targeting is those infrastructure constraints don’t exist,” he said. “Buyers for the first time can see all available supply to them to determine what they want to buy.”
CTV is moving faster than any other channel
Connected television is accelerating the supply-side shift more rapidly than display or mobile. According to OpenX’s data, 51% of CTV marketplace spend already uses supply-side targeting, compared with 37% across all formats.
The reasons are specific to television’s complexity. CTV programmatic buying involves inventory-share agreements, intermediaries rebroadcasting supply, and opaque paths between buyer and publisher. Moving closer to the supply side helps buyers understand what they are actually purchasing.
“In CTV, we’re seeing the shift to supply around quality, because buyers are better able to infer it there,” Romasco said. “The second thing we’re seeing is traditionally in TV, the way we do our targeting is around content. So the closer you get to supply, there’s more content signal available like genre or rating or language.”
IAB projects US digital video ad spend will exceed $80 billion in 2026, growing 11% year over year, while eMarketer forecasts CTV upfront spending will surpass primetime linear TV upfront spending for the first time.
Appointment viewing targets the living room moment
OpenX is packaging its supply-side capabilities into a product called TV by OpenX, designed to help buyers reach what the company calls “appointment viewing” moments. The concept combines three conditions: glass-on-wall viewing on a large screen, multiple household members watching together, and content the viewer actively chose.
“It’s the combination of bringing all those things together that create the most powerful moment for an advertiser,” Romasco said.
In practice, buyers can activate three targeting layers through deal IDs: attention-based targeting measuring user engagement, co-viewing likelihood indicating multiple viewers in the room, and content signals including genre, live versus on-demand, and show-level data.
Turnkey activation through existing workflows
OpenX launched attention targeting for CTV in March 2026 through a partnership with TVision, enabling real-time activation against high-attention inventory. The company says its CTV footprint spans more than 242 million monthly unique US viewers.
Romasco emphasized that buyers do not need to overhaul their operations to use the capabilities. “This is already available today. It’s in the platform. You don’t need to change workflows,” he said. “These are typical standard buyer workflows that they’re used to, of deal IDs with the right targeting applied to it.”
The underlying enabler, he argued, is the proximity to publishers that supply-side targeting provides. “It’s when you have better signal and you get closer to publishers and you get closer to your SSP that this targeting truly gets unlocked,” Romasco said.
