Floor pricing in ad tech isn’t as simple as it seems. Dive into why transparency around dynamic floors matters, what’s driving SSP practices, and how publishers and buyers can reclaim clarity in the auction.
Image credit @keithepetri
It started with a tweet.
Well, technically, it started on the Marketecture Live stage, when Sincera’s Co-founder, Mike O’Sullivan, made a point about how publishers should (and shouldn’t) be handling floor pricing.
I tweeted about it. O’Sullivan came back with a clarification. And then?
Twitter took it from there—debating what floor pricing really means in an industry where the SSPs are tweaking numbers, the DSPs are trying to make sense of it all, and publishers are just trying to keep the lights on.
What seems like a technicality is actually a battlefield for the future of ad tech. Here’s what happened, what it actually means, and why this issue is so critical.
The Floor Isn’t the Floor
First, let’s consider O’Sullivan’s core argument: The floor should represent the minimum price a publisher is willing to accept, period.
Sounds simple, right? Not quite. In reality, many publishers aren’t actually setting a hard floor; they’re letting SSPs tweak it dynamically in pursuit of yield optimization. That means an SSP might take a publisher’s original floor price and push it up (or down) to influence how DSPs bid.
- O’Sullivan’s take: This wasn’t what the floor was supposed to be. If you want to nudge bid prices higher, do it in a separate field (he proposed calling it something like ‘recommended price’ or ‘minimum bid’). Just don’t hijack the floor field for it.
- Chris Kane’s counter: Isn’t it a seller’s job to coax the highest possible bids? Real estate agents don’t just broadcast the lowest price a seller will accept; they work to get top dollar. Why shouldn’t publishers do the same?
- The messy truth: In practice, SSPs are often inflating the floor, not the publishers. How much of that extra revenue is actually going to publishers? O’Sullivan doesn’t think it’s enough.
Image credit @Scrilla100
Twitter Weighs In: Is This a Problem or Just the Game?
After Marketecture Live, I tweeted about O’Sullivan’s point, saying publishers shouldn’t hijack the floor object to get higher bids.
O’Sullivan jumped in to clarify: “Not quite—what I meant is that the floor should be the actual minimum a publisher is willing to accept. If you’re accepting sub-floors or dynamically adjusted yield floors, that’s not the spirit of the field.”
From there, the debate took off:
- Some agreed that the floor object is overloaded, making it unclear what a DSP is actually bidding against.
- Others argued that dynamic floors aren’t inherently bad—if used correctly, they can benefit both buyers and sellers.
- Dan Balis summed up the tension: “If the outbound bid floor equals the reserve price, are we suggesting SSPs work pro bono now?” In other words, SSPs need to make money too. So, where’s the line between fair optimization and opaque price manipulation?
- Chris Kane added more context, explaining that SSPs often add their fees to the publisher’s hard floor and then may increase the value to encourage higher bids from DSPs. The question: At what point does this become an unfair advantage?
- Mike O’Sullivan suggested a solution, advocating for a floorType value—so DSPs could distinguish between publisher-set floors and SSP-optimized floors, bringing more clarity to the ecosystem.
- Some pushed back, pointing out that publishers don’t operate in a vacuum. They risk losing revenue if they refuse to play the game while competitors leverage dynamic floors. As one participant said, “Publishers are stuck—either optimize floors dynamically or risk being underbid in the auction.”
SSPs and Systemic Incentives: Why Does This Persist?
This isn’t just about SSPs optimizing revenue—it’s about how they compete for publisher business. SSPs want to show higher win rates to publishers, so they tweak floors to make the inventory more valuable to DSPs, leading to higher bids and more successful auctions.
That can mean inflating the floor price beyond what the publisher initially intended, creating a murky pricing dynamic where buyers don’t really know what they’re bidding against.
This opacity benefits SSPs in the short term, but in the long run, it erodes trust in the entire system. And, as more buyers push for supply path optimization (SPO), SSPs that don’t offer transparency risk losing business.
Where Sincera Fits Into All Of This
A side note that’s actually a big deal is that Sincera, the company O’Sullivan co-founded, was recently acquired by The Trade Desk. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Sincera specializes in ad tech data and publisher quality insights.
This matters because The Trade Desk is one of the biggest DSPs out there, and Sincera’s whole mission has been to increase transparency in the ecosystem. That includes giving publishers feedback on their performance and helping DSPs understand which inventory is high quality.
So when O’Sullivan talks about cleaning up floor pricing, he’s not just throwing out opinions—he’s someone whose company has made ad tech less of a black box. And now, with The Trade Desk backing Sincera, we could see real moves toward standardizing and clarifying these pricing mechanics.
What This Means for Publishers & Buyers
If you’re a publisher, the big takeaway is that SSPs might not always be optimizing for you. Sure, dynamic floors can help maximize revenue—when used transparently. But if your SSP is tweaking things that make your inventory look overpriced or inconsistent, buyers might start bypassing you altogether.
If you’re a buyer, this debate underscores why you need better visibility into pricing mechanics. Buyers can drive change by prioritizing transparent supply paths, demanding clear floor signals, and pushing DSPs to reward publishers that provide verifiable bid data.
What Needs to Change
For publishers, transparency alone doesn’t pay the bills—competitive pressure often forces them into gray areas just to keep pace. But, in the long run, unclear floor pricing mechanics erode trust and can push buyers toward walled gardens where transparency is baked in.
This isn’t just about tweaking a field in OpenRTB—it’s about who really controls value in ad tech.
Publishers must reclaim their pricing signals, SSPs must stop manipulating transparency, and buyers must demand clarity or risk bidding into a black box.
The time for change isn’t some far-off ideal—it’s right now. Because if the floor isn’t really the floor, then what are we even standing on?