The Trade Desk used factors like having a clean supply path, viewability and ad refresh rate to decide on the list—factors that are inherently biased against web publishers, said a data provider source who used to work for publishers.
“CTV doesn’t have ad refresh because it’s a different medium and they have natural viewability,” the source said. “Their ads are the size of the screen. You can’t compare to a [web] publisher.”
This methodology could also skew toward more subscription-funded rather than ad-funded publishers.
“If the only way you make money is ads, you might have more ads on the page to make money, which means you have high ad clutter,” Blodwell said.
Publishers are also tired of being evaluated by technical criteria at all, said Tate, especially when those criteria are constantly changing and publisher success is more effectively measured on valuable audiences.
“Some of [The Trade Desk’s] KPIs (key performance indicators) could be unrealistic [compared to] the industry standards,” Tate said. “We work on all these metrics in the same breath as getting the users to come back and [grow] subscribers.”
Arbiter of media quality
Several publishers see value in the list and the SP500+ even if they disagree with some of its particulars.
After all, the original philosophy of programmatic was that audiences were more important than publisher environments—an original sin that led to dollars going to low-quality websites.
“The SP500+ is more measured and thoughtful,” said a publishing source who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive industry relations. “I am pro MFA (made for advertising) sites losing budgets. A lot of this is marketing. They’re more trying to associate themselves with great brands.”
While sorting the wheat from the chaff could be helpful, publishers balk at The Trade Desk playing the role, feeling that they need to adopt The Trade Desk’s publisher-centric products, like UID2 and OpenPath, to make the list, Blodwell said.
“It’s mad to me that in 2024, buyers are outsourcing the decision of what quality is to a tech company,” Blodwell said.