Reflecting On 2024 – Expert Insights on the Programmatic Industry
As the digital advertising landscape continues to evolve, programmatic advertising remains at the forefront of innovation, shaping the way brands…
In 2019, Google’s shift to a first-price auction significantly transformed how publishers managed pricing rules. To streamline and centralize the process, Google Ad Manager (GAM) replaced the previous pricing rules with Unified Pricing Rules (UPRs), ensuring consistent pricing across all channels. UPRs also empower publishers to establish universal pricing rules for all indirect demand for their inventory within GAM. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of UPRs and their application within Google Ad Manager.
Understanding Unified Pricing Rules in Google Ad Manager
The Unified Pricing Rules is an advanced feature on Google Ad Manager that enables publishers to set and harmonize the minimum price for programmatic demand on GAM. On the other hand, the Optimized Pricing feature complements the UPRs by safeguarding the inventory’s worth, thereby preventing buyers from acquiring it for a lower price.
Google identifies several scenarios where UPRs can be applied:
- Open Auction via Authorized Buyers
- Private Auctions
- First Look demand
- Third-party exchanges participating in Open Bidding
- Remnant line item types: Price Priority, Network, and Bulk
- Ad Exchange linked accounts
- AdSense backfill (initially excluded from the list)
However, UPRs are not applicable in specific contexts:
- Programmatic direct campaigns, including programmatic guaranteed (standard and sponsorship) and preferred deal line items
- House line items
- Line items with a zero (0) rate and no Value CPM set
- Line items with a CPD or CPA rate are treated as if they have a $0 rate
- Publishers can employ hard floors or target CPMs as UPRs. Google imposes a limit of 200 UPRs per Ad Manager network, which should be adequate for most publishers when rules are cleverly used to group inventory with similar attributes.
Despite these limitations, proper use of UPRs provides benefits that typically outweigh the drawbacks for most publishers.
How publishers can benefit from Unified Pricing Rules
1. Boost the revenue
Unified Pricing Rules prioritize higher-priced rules when multiple UPRs target the same ad units. This ensures publishers receive better revenue from their inventory because they work as an additional competitor from the buy side perspective and enforce higher spending.
Important: Please remember to approach this carefully because if you set the price too high, you can scare off demand, and instead of gaining, you will lose.
2. Control over your inventory
UPRs allow control of pricing in multiple dimensions, which means that they can adapt to whatever pricing strategy the publisher has – whether it is based on sizes, browsers, goes, or some custom dimensions determined by key values.
3. Everything in one place
UPRs offer publishers a convenient, centralized way to manage pricing rules for all Open Market inventory within GAM, making it easier to maintain consistency and maximize revenue. Although 200 UPRs per Ad Manager network is limited, this should be sufficient for most publishers when used strategically by implementing UPRs and focusing on their benefits.
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Bartłomiej Oprządek
Senior Business Development Manager & Team Leader
publishers@yieldbird.com
