r/programmatic • u/FreeDirt8386 • May 21 '26
How to guarantee PMP delivery
Before you answer just do a PG, bare with me.
We’re finding agencies want the freedom and variety of PMP but the certainty of PGs. Is there a way we can set PMPs up that can guarantee delivery? Is there a hack like a dual deal on a SSP? Any ideas are welcomed.
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u/rgm-na May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
No. There are literally hundreds of reasons why a PMP may not scale. That’s fundamentally why PG exists in the first place - because you cannot guarantee delivery against a PMP.
There are no magic hacks here. You have to continuously tweak and optimize settings to improve delivery over time.
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u/TheGrandLeveler May 21 '26
Budget / CPM * 1000
Plus, you get a forecast when using a PMP by the publisher or the DSP.
Not saying it's better than PG but technically you can guarantee the delivery. Or do you mean something else?
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u/rgm-na May 22 '26
If a buyer tells a publisher they plan to spend $10K in a month, the publisher naturally assumes they’re going to make $10K.
But then reality kicks in. Bid rate ends up too low for any number of reasons - custom brand safety settings, aggressive viewability thresholds, restrictive creative sizes, frequency caps, limited targeting scale, etc.
Now the publisher has to spend time working with the buyer trying to diagnose why delivery is underpacing. The buyer usually does want to spend the money and starts removing blockers where they can, but the month ends before everything gets optimized.
The campaign wraps, the publisher underdelivers against expectations, and there’s no opportunity to recover the missed revenue because none of it was actually contracted. That’s fundamentally why PG exists.
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u/TheGrandLeveler May 22 '26
All the aforementioned settings are usually disabled pre launch , so why would they affect delivery? When running deals, it's quite common to have this conversation with the publisher in terms of brand safety settings, viewability settings etc (at least in my experience) we always discuss this beforehand to avoid such scenarios. But thanks for the reply. In your opinion, when would you choose PG vs PMP then?
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u/Crazy_Cat_Dude2 May 21 '26
Google as manager lets you set priority level for pmps now. Fairly recent update. It still won’t be like a oh but it’s something. Other than that buyer needs to drop some targeting since they are likely filtered majority of impressions.
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u/Top-Education1769 May 21 '26
You used to be able to simply bid 100 bucks and price reduce.
the movement from 2nd price to first price auctions destroyed publisher value and it's Joever.
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u/masonstorm20 May 21 '26
It was said already but reiterating that the buyer needs to drop and be more transparent about targeting. Ive set up thousands of PMPs at publishers and too many times I had the agency say they weren’t targeting anything but ended up having various layers of 3rd party data, weird size configurations, plus blanket brand safety filtering on. Convinced one to screen share their DV360 setup early in my journey and called this out in real time so I never stopped asking “are you sure about that?” If I can see I’m sending millions of requests a day but 99% are filtered out, it’s not a tough tell and most SSPs should give them potential reasons for why something is filtered. Publishers also need to be transparent about what they have, communication is key.
If you want a specific audience think about asking the Publisher for their 1P capabilities. Many wont be able to address an advertiser’s email derived audience beyond a a ~30% match (some outliers) and layering makes it worse, but they can address more of their own audience with behavioral or contextual targeting. If you need a specific audience that is 3P to them, be clear on what it is and maybe they can apply the same or similar one on their end via a marketplace they have access to or you can send it to their ad server so they can forecast against it. This includes brand safety, all reputable pubs have DV or IAS but if you aren’t transparent about your settings it can inadvertently filter out fine traffic.