Sharethrough’s latest SSP update aims to dramatically simplify ad ops for publishers

Sharethrough, the native advertising SSP, has launched Unified Auction features in its Sharethrough for Publishers platform. The features are designed to reduce workflow friction in reporting and optimization by making mediation, adding multichannel demand sources and rolling up reporting across all demand sources a breeze.

With the Unified Auction update, publishers can see all of their header bidders and direct sources in one place and facilitate a simultaneous auction. The Sharethrough header wrapper supports traditional display and video demand, in addition to native. “You’ll only have one header wrapper, and publishers will want one that’s multichannel, and other wrappers don’t support native,” said Alex White, Sharethrough VP of product marketing, by phone.

While Sharethrough believes growth will come from native executions, “there is still a robust business in display, and that’s where the liquidity still exists in programmatic,” said White. “We’re not restricting to native formats if your monetization strategy still requires display and video.”

With one tag on their sites, publishers can set up the wrapper to accommodate all demand sources. The interface is designed to make adding, removing or changing the order of demand sources in the mediation waterfall simple, without having to tap developer resources.

In a demo, Sharethrough walked me through setting up a new bidder or demand source. After selecting a new source, it’s a matter of plugging in the required fields for setup (IDs, etc.). The fields are customized for each source.

“Other wrappers provide reporting in the form of raw data or one-off spreadsheets, making it harder to draw insights and take action. In some cases, publishers may not even touch their reporting due to the hassle of having to sort through so much data,” said James Robinson, senior communications manager at Sharethrough, in the announcement.

Below is a screencast from Sharethrough that walks through the updated platform.