In a post about overhauling price floors on the Index Exchange blog, I’ve previously made the case that programmatic sellers and buyers would benefit from enhancements to how floors are signaled in OpenRTB. The programmatic industry has evolved to a point where multiple creative types, sizes, and durations can fulfill the bid request for a given impression opportunity (or collection of opportunities, in the case of a video or audio pod). In the most recent release for public comment of the OpenRTB specification, the IAB Tech Lab is addressing the need for a seller to price inventory based on the multiple possible durations of video or audio creatives that bidders may return in their bid responses.
Introducing Duration Floors
We have introduced a new concept and corresponding OpenRTB object of DurFloors (duration floors). Duration floors allow a seller to specify pricing for creative durations in a number of ranges. Following is a diagram illustrating an example of the type of pricing structure that duration floors enable:
Duration floors are distinct from the concept of minimum CPM per second (the OpenRTB field mincpmpersec), because they allow the seller to define a non-linear relationship between duration and price. In the current release of OpenRTB 2.6, mincpmpersec only exists in the Imp.Video and Imp.Audio objects, which means it can’t be used to specify distinct pricing for private market transactions.
Given that there are now multiple fields related to floors, existing in several different objects, we have also introduced a new Implementation Guidance subsection called Guidance on the Use of Floors, explaining the uses of and interactions between the bidfloor, mincpmpersec and durfloors fields.
Here’s Where You Come In
IAB Tech Lab is opening up the proposed duration and floor-related changes for public comment and inviting you to review the new concept and implementation guidance in addition to other proposed changes to OpenRTB. The public comment period will run through October 6th, 2023. Assuming no major refactors are required, these changes will likely be included in the OpenRTB 2.6-202310 release.
What’s Next
We will create additional proposals around enabling publishers to specify floors by size for multi-size impression opportunities, as well as distinct floors by creative type (e.g., different floors for banner vs. video vs. native, when all are eligible for the same impression opportunity). Where proposals have sufficient support from sellers and buyers, we will similarly run them through the public comment process, and update the Guidance on the Use of Floors to explain how these new floors work.
As always, the IAB Tech Lab relies on participation and input from members to shape the future direction of programmatic interoperability. Please make your voice heard and contribute to the process.
Senior Director of Product
Index Exchange