SpotXchange announced today that they’re introducing a loss reporting capability to its buy-side RTB partners. So when you bid on inventory via SpotXchange and lose to another bidder, you’ll be able to find out how much the inventory was sold for. This kind of reporting has been previously unavailable and will allow buyers to bid more accurately, although it will be interesting to see whether additional transparency pushes prices higher or lower (as SpotXchange aligns itself with the supply side, I’d guess higher).
Whichever way prices go, knowing how much you lost out by will help RTB deliver on what it promised to, especially for publishers. RTB has always been spoken about as a means of delivering the market value for each impression, but it has been difficult for buyers to discern how much they need to bid when they didn’t know how much what they were bidding on eventually sold for.
Compare that to offline auctions and you’ll realise how strange that is – imagine not being allowed to find out how much something went for on eBay or at Christies when you’ve been bidding on it. Hopefully more companies will follow suit so buyers and sellers can enjoy even more transparency .
