Properly Aligning Supply and Demand

Owned by Amy Durcan (Deactivated)
Last updated: Feb 15, 2017 by Kat Mareck (Deactivated)
2 min read

Targeting

One major factor to applying best practices within the SpringServe platform is to align your demand to the appropriate supply. This consists of only aligning tags that have corresponding targeting in terms of size, geo, device, etc. For example, if have set targeting for your supply tag to small player, don't apply demand with large player targeting.

Avoiding Missed Opportunities

Missed Opportunities register when the request is coming in to SpringServe, it passes Supply Tag targeting, but it doesn't pass targeting on any of your demand tags. If demand is aligned improperly, it is possible to have 0 opportunities even though the requests pass Supply Tag targeting. 

There are two ways to deal with missed opportunities:


  1. Tighten up your supply tag targeting to let fewer requests in that don't satisfy your demand tag targeting - in this case add white lists and/or size targeting on the supply tag level
  2. Widen the targeting on your waterfall by aligning demand that has broader targeting. You may want to add a RON, all sizes tag to the waterfall so that any request coming will satisfy that tag's targeting.

Waterfall

Consider the type of demand that is most likely to fill as you add to your waterfall. Make sure to use demand that is set to a reasonable rate - do not put a $12 demand tag on a $2 supply tag because it's highly unlikely that it will fill.

Make sure that your waterfall is not too short. When you have multiple demand tags at the same priority, one of them is selected at random to be called on the waterfall. If it does not return an impression, the request moves down the waterfall - not to another tag at the same priority. We recommend that your waterfall have at least 4 to 5 distinct priorities.

Having a waterfall that is too long makes things very difficult to optimize. It is also unlikely that a request will get very far down the waterfall without getting timed out, so not additional value is provided by having an extra long waterfall. It is recommended to not let the size of your waterfall exceed 15 demand tags. Note that if you have very tight targeting on your demand tags, it becomes more acceptable to have a longer waterfall.