The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has announced that it will remove all its inventory from the Open Marketplace (OMP) in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines on 1 January 2021.
The move will see the media owner connecting their first-party data and persistent user IDs to programmatic deals (preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed), in a bid to drive efficiencies and return on investment for buyers.
In a statement, the company said open marketplaces represent a series of growing concerns for advertisers and publishers. From brand safety to data privacy and the upcoming deprecation of user IDs (third-party cookies and the IDFA), it is becoming more challenging than ever to create efficiencies that drive success – and believes that programmatic deals will offer brands and buyers a better way to transact programmatic media.
“We are committed to provide the best possible results for our clients and that means being able to offer transparent buying models,” said Ian Hocking, VP of Digital at SCMP.
“We continue to believe in programmatic buying and see deals as a better way to ensure brand safety and increase performance. As we expand our presence throughout Asia, SCMP is hiring a team of programmatic experts in Singapore and Hong Kong to help our partners make the switch to programmatic deals.”
Once open marketplace access is shut off in Asia, buyers will no longer be able to access SCMP’s inventory and will need to set up deals to maintain access to SCMP’s audience.
SCMP is not the first major publisher to shift away from open exchange programmatic ads, though it is the first to do so for all its inventory, for markets in Asia. The New York Times withdrew open marketplace programmatic ads from its mobile app in January of this year, citing slow loading times which was detracting from the user experience.
Sourced from South China Morning Post, AdExchanger
