Time to Ring the Cash Register

Takeaways from Last Holiday Season

In order to prepare for the 3 highest revenue days of the year, we took a look back on 2018’s holiday season.

Cyber Monday was the highest revenue day of 2018; Tuesday (the day after Cyber Monday) was the second highest; and Black Friday was the third.

• Cyber Monday 2018 experienced a 13% higher revenue than Black Friday, but slightly lower CPMs.

• Comparing 2018’s average CPM and average daily revenue to that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday we saw:

  • Black Friday delivered a 65% revenue increase over the average and a 48% CPM increase.

  • Cyber Monday registered an 86% revenue increase over the average and a 46% CPM increase.

• So far in 2019, we’re seeing a positive trend in CPMs and are hoping to see CPMs reach 40% above the 2019 daily average on Black Friday.

• Following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, revenue and CPMs declined in December but remained well above average until a few days before Christmas, when revenue and CPMs dropped steeply. This drop continued through New Year's.

  • We’ll likely see a similar drop this year. However, with Cyber Monday falling on December 2nd, the decline in revenue and CPMs will begin later this year.

Week At A Glance

A Polarizing Q4

Q4 Is All About November

Comparing this Q4 so far to that of last year, we’ve observed a 17% increase in revenue, a 20% increase in impressions, and a 2% decrease in CPMs. In aggregate, we’re seeing a successful Q4 with some publisher volatility across the board. However, with Thanksgiving falling later than last year, this November will miss out on 6 big revenue days. You may remember that we saw 2018 November’s revenue at 28% over October’s.

Surprising Publisher Impression Fluctuations YoY

We expected more consistency among our publishers when it came to impressions, but that is not the case. Comparing impressions from Q4 to the same time frame last year, we observed:

• Many publishers experienced increases in impressions coupled with decreases in CPMs and vice versa.

• Only 3 publishers saw both a major spike in CPMs and impressions YoY.

Partners’ (SSP) See Changes in CPMs

Comparing CPMs of partners’, we saw that some small partners’ experienced large increases in CPMs YoY while large and mid-size partners were more varied. We observed:

• 4 partners, most with no scale, grew 50% in CPMs YoY. The one exception was Oath, which grew 50% plus.

• Partners that offered both scale and big CPM increases include:

  • OpenX CPMs increased by 18% YoY.

  • Index Exchange CPM’s increased by 27% YoY.

  • Rubicon CPM’s increased by 21% YoY.

Large Publishers Winning With Private and PG

When comparing impressions by transaction type, we observed a significant increase YoY in private and programmatic guaranteed which has been driven by a handful of large publishers that average over a billion impressions a month. 

• Open Auction experienced a 13% increase in impressions and flat CPMs.

• Private is up 66% but saw CPMs dip by 25%.

• Off of a very small 2018 base, Programmatic Guaranteed experienced a 146% growth in impressions and a 13% increase in CPMs.

A Note About the Data this Week

If you follow our emails closely, you’ll note that in our last email when looking at October revenue over prior year we saw only modest growth. We have since increased the size of our benchmarking pool and have excluded two publishers that were anomalies.

In addition, we excluded Amazon from this analysis. This is disappointing as this is the time of year we expect to see Amazon deliver their best revenue and CPMs. However, they have been unable to deliver consistent data in the past few weeks. We are hopeful they resolve this issue soon. Facebook has also been excluded. They do not provide a 12 month look back window, so we are left with the option of removing publishers who have been added in the past six months or removing Facebook :(

Week At A Glance

The Clocks Have Changed, Maybe Q4 Will Start Soon

Are We There Yet? Q4 to One Month into Q4

• Comparing the first month of Q4 2019 to that of last year, we’ve observed that revenue increased by a modest 1%, impressions decreased by 5%, and CPMs increased by 6%.

• The number of partners producing over $100K in October decreased from 28 to 25 YoY.

• The average number of partners per publisher increased from 14 to 15 YoY.

• There are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

A Modest Shift to Private

• Open Auction experienced a revenue decrease YoY while Private and Programmatic Guaranteed experienced revenue increases.

• Open Auction's revenue share thus fell by 6%, while Private and Programmatic Guaranteed both gained an additional 2% of revenue share. The remainder fell into "Not Available".

YoY Revenue Share by Partner

Big Changes in October 

• AppNexus snagged 4% additional revenue share, while Rubicon gained by 2%.

• AdX’s revenue share decreased by 3% and Amazon’s by 2%. AdX could be seeing an impact from their recent changes, but Amazon is surprising given their historical growth

• AdX, AppNexus, and Rubicon delivered the highest revenues respectively in October 2019. This is a change from October 2018, where AdX, AppNexus, and Index Exchange delivered the highest revenues.

Biggest Revenue Winners YoY

• Interestingly, of the partners that experienced revenue growth, most were mid-range to small partners.

• TripleLift saw an 89% increase YoY

• AppNexus saw a 43% increase YoY

• Teads saw a 54% increase YoY

Only a Few Creative Sizes Stood Out

The 300x250 experienced a revenue decrease YoY across all devices, but magnified on desktop which is a trend we expect to continue.

• As expected the 320x50 grew in line with Mobile.

• Video/Overlay gained 4% additional revenue share, while 728x90 saw a 2% decrease.

A Quick Thanks And A Note On The Data
Our data has gotten stronger this year thanks to partners like AdX, Index Exchange, OpenX, and Criteo who have made significant investments in providing a wider dataset and higher levels of transparency. It is important to note that Facebook has been removed from this YoY view as they provide a lookback window of only 180 days and we have added many new Publishers in the past year.

Next up: A deep dive into CPMs.

Month At A Glance

Google's Switch To First Price Auction Part 2

Little Market Volatility, Lots of Publisher Volatility

When Google introduced first-price auction at 20% last Monday (9/09), there was surprisingly little variability in the market. This past week has been quite a different reality. After Google rolled out first-price auction at 50% on Monday (9/16), some publishers experienced significant gains in revenue while others experienced the exact opposite. When we looked at Monday’s data (9/16), and saw AdX revenue down 16% week over week, we thought this transition might get ugly; and for some, it still may.

STAQ is seeing modest growth in CPMs across all partners. This is consistent year over year when looking at 2018 for the same time period, further indicating that the overall market is relatively unchanged by this transition. That being said, we are seeing AdX revenue flat week over week, while all other partners (excluding AdX) experienced a small revenue growth.

For the week of September 16th (September 16 to September 22),

• AdX CPMs were $1.34, up from $1.27 the week before; an increase of 6%

• All other partners (excluding AdX) experienced an increase of 4% week over week, with CPMs at $1.54, up from $1.49.

• All other partners (excluding AdX) experienced a revenue increase of 7%.

Publishers' See Varying September AdX Performance

Taking a closer look at how individual publishers were impacted, we have observed a marked variance week over week for AdX. 

• Many larger publishers saw varying revenue decreases week over week.

• Interestingly, mid-size and smaller publishers had a much lumpier experience on a weekly basis. Some experienced revenue increases greater than 30%, and others experienced revenue decreases of over 20%.

• The net impact of these variances was slight growth in AdX CPMs but a flat AdX revenue week over week.

Overall, as first-price auction is rolled out at higher levels, we have begun to see variance in AdX performance for individual publishers. While we expect the market to stabilize, it appears it is moving in different directions for different publishers. As a whole, Google seems to be managing this market dynamic exceedingly well, unless you are one of the handful of publishers that are down. Interestingly, year over year, we're seeing that September CPMs are experiencing little movement but revenue is down. 

AdX At A Glance

Has Google Flipped the Switch?

Has Google Flipped the Switch?

September 10th marked the start of Google's full integration into first-price auction. Over the course of last week, STAQ heard that some publishers have been fully transitioned, while others are anticipating their switch. Given that Google is moving, in full, to first-price auction in September, we decided to see what effect this has had on AdX CPMs.
 

Looking at CPMs across all publishers, we see little to no variance; AdX CPMs are trending as expected for this time of year and mirror a similar trend seen in 2018 during this time period.

The highest negative variation from August to September was over Labor Day weekend, where we observed a 6% decrease in CPMs for AdX and all other partners (excluding AdX). Following this holiday dip, it appears that business is back to normal.

For the week of September 9th (September 9th to September 13th)

• AdX CPMs were $1.27, up from $1.22; an increase of 4% week over week.

• All other partners (excluding AdX) saw an average CPM of $1.47, up from $1.42; an increase of 3% week over week.

Today, no news is good news, as it seems that Google has been making sure that their major transition is as non-disruptive as possible. That being said, it is far too soon to make sweeping conclusions on the long term effects of Google's switch. STAQ will continue monitoring our data as the transition to first-price auction comes to a close over the next few weeks.

Have a theory, question, or data analysis you would like to see in our next email? Please reach out to your STAQ Account Manager. 
 

Week At A Glance

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* The data in this email compares programmatic industry performance, across US, open market inventory only, running through STAQ systems for January 2018 - September, 2019.