Cedato launches Video Supply Path Optimization in its new premium marketplace

Cedato is out today with an open version of its private video ad supply-side marketplace, along with what it says is the first supply path optimization (SPO) for video ads.

The video ad platform’s previous marketplace was a private one for its own clients. That’s now called Cedato X Direct, and the new open marketplace — featuring premium inventory — is branded as the Cedato X Marketplace.

But the Tel Aviv-based company is pointing to its new, built-in Video Supply Path Optimization (VSPO) as a key differentiator.

Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Dvir Doron told me the VSPO is designed to make life easier for demand side platforms (DSPs).

Especially in header bidding situations, he said, DSPs might be offered the same impression from 10 to 20 different exchanges or networks. And the impression might have been passed from an exchange to a network to another exchange for bids and sub-bids, adding as many as four additional hops that increase latency.

It also increases the DSP’s Queries Per Second (QPS), a key measurement of efficiency in responding to bid requests. The higher the QPS, the higher the server load — and the higher the DSP’s operating cost.

Doron said that Cedato’s VSPO eliminates the problem of multiple sources for the same impression bid request to DSPs, and it reduces the number of hops to no more than one. This shortest path with no duplicates, he said, can reduce the DSP’s cost of winning a bid for an impression by 60 to 70 percent.

Header bidding for its video ads takes place in the Cedato video player, since video ads don’t have a header like a web page. Doron noted that header bidding is often the “root cause” of duplicate sources for impressions, because the competing exchanges can have some of the same DSPs, although such duplication can also exist in waterfall bidding. Cedato’s VSPO, while designed to make video header bidding more efficient, can be used for any video ad bidding situation.