Retailers Choose the SSPs. Brands Are Along for the Ride

It’s not uncommon for a single brand to sell through four (or more) retailers, each with either a distinct supply-side platform or their own internal proprietary solution. Just imagine how “ruff” a pet brand has it selling products on Target, Petco, Kroger, and Amazon.

With all of these platforms measured a little (or a lot) differently, it can be time-consuming and resource-sucking for brands to learn the ins and outs of each SSP. In addition, some of those retailers—Petco being a recent example—could opt to strike out and launch their own platforms, leaving you with yet another platform to learn, in addition to Criteo, PromoteIQ, CitrusAd, Koddi, and other names you might recognize in the space already. (Note: One recent partnership announcement could bring you one less SSP to learn.) 

Multiple SSPs can mean headaches when it comes to scaling management, discerning the nuances between them, and comparing retailers in those pressing performance and budget discussions with your company’s leadership. A brand could use third-party software for management execution and visibility or build an in-house solution to help with scale and visibility—but you’d still have to know the rules for each retailer and SSP. Marketers often end up navigating a convoluted world of multiple Excel dashboards.

Managing multiple SSPs presents a complex challenge for brands trying to maximize their media spend and optimize performance. With each platform offering different tools, attribution models, and metrics, understanding how to leverage these technologies is crucial for scaling efficiently. Brands need to navigate this fragmented landscape by identifying commonalities and best practices across SSPs to streamline operations, ensure accuracy in performance comparison, and unlock the full potential of retail media. 

When budgets are tight, or you’re trying to prioritize which retailers will deliver the highest return, asking the right questions upfront is critical. Whether it’s choosing the right attribution window, understanding relevancy in search results, or assessing minimum CPCs, these decisions can make or break your campaign’s efficiency. Not only does this help stretch your ad dollars, but it also ensures you’re focusing efforts on platforms that will give you the most accurate, impactful results across the board.

Whether or not you have the time to invest in this kind of analysis is always tough—but it is something that someone needs to do. This fragmented landscape is getting bigger and more complicated (hello, AI and iROAS), and foundationally, you want to have the confidence that you’re on solid ground and know where the potholes are when you make those budget decisions.

For both onboarding to an SSP or replatforming to a new SSP, here are the questions you must ask your retailer, your SSP, or yourself right out of the gate.

What are the attribution window options, and is there time in data lag from retailer to SSP?

Each SSP has different default and flexibility levels set by the retailer. Your brand may use a different window of time for attribution with each SSP. For example, the assortment (how many SKUs you have at a retailer) may be different due to pack sizes (45 days) versus single sizes (14 days). So consumption windows may differ, and you want to ensure apples-to-apples comparison across retailers. 

All SSPs offer several attribution methods in the platform, making it easy to select and compare.

Is in-store attribution an option, and how is it calculated?

This matters because some retailers are very heavily transacted in-store after an online interaction and may have a default attribution window as long as 30 days. That could inflate the value of the digital touch point to the in-store conversion and make metrics like ROAS seem much higher than they are.

What components determine ‘relevancy’ when it comes to a search result?

Relevancy is how closely a search result matches the user’s query and how useful that result is in the context of the search. All SSPs and retailers should have basic definitions and attributes to determine relevancy. Some SSPs allow the retailer to dictate the weight of a brand term, or even profit margin, as part of the calculation. 

How is personalization defined: Session-based? Logged-in user? Current basket contents?

Personalization can mean different things in different scenarios. Some retailers offer product recommendations (as sponsored product carousels) based on what might already be in a shopper’s basket even if they’re not logged in, whereas others won’t unless the user is signed. Koddi—the historical SSP for many travel sites, which has now expanded to Kroger and Gopuff—has a dynamic capability that offers category and keyword targeting, along with audience and behavior insights that can get close to personalization without logged-in requirements. 

Criteo has a mature feature in their Commerce Max program that indexes product detail pages according to content and is then able to automatically match queries to products, lessening the need for detailed personalization signals like being logged in.

What are the minimum CPCs by category?

The SSP works with multiple retailers to help level set what qualifies as “high” for your category. This matters when you have to start splitting budgets across retailers at the product level when the same SKU is found in multiple retailers. If the “floor” for your product is $1 at one retailer but $0.80 at another, with sales volume being about the same, you’ll obviously want to lean toward the retailer with better return.

CPCs aren’t something any SSP can control; it’s retailer-driven. But the more retailers an SSP has on their platform, the more data they have to inform the retailer on what is “high” versus “low” in any given category. 

Are there support services available to help your brand manage campaigns?

Some SSPs, like Criteo, have internal teams that can help (usually for a percentage of ad spend), or they can recommend agency partners. It may be possible to get training for your in-house management team. Some SSPs also have a private marketplace in addition to the self-service offering where the media is managed by an in-house team at the retailer. Often, ad spend is tied into larger retailer initiatives or marketing-defined funding/co-op agreements that offer less visibility and influence than self-service.

What demand-side platform options are available?

Some SSPs are part of a larger company that may contain DSPs within their full offering. It’s important to understand the DSP offering so that when you’re ready to go beyond sponsored search, display on-site, branch into the world of first-party data (either from the retailer or with your own), and bring offsite engagement to your product detail pages, you won’t have to add new technology or partnerships. This may also give you better rates, as you’re consolidating media spend into one platform versus two or three. 

Which markets are supported? 

Most of these SSPs have solid global coverage. The leader in the space is Criteo, in terms of the total number of retailers supported in different countries. CitrusAd, when it comes to grocery, also has solid representation in certain markets, specifically the U.K. and Australia.

I’ve long been a believer that retail media is what will ultimately drive and unify not only media growth but also collaboration between retailers who share commonalities no matter where they are located. The IAB’s recent guide on in-store measurement in collaboration with IAB Europe is just one example of what is yet to come.

How do SSPs charge? 

Each SSP will work out specific licensing with the retailer that includes platform access, maintenance, and builds, usually in a multiyear agreement since enterprise-level software integrations take time and energy to implement and ramp up. A retailer can fund this software in a few ways: They may bake a percentage into their minimum CPCs in each category, or the SSP adds a technology fee, like Criteo, which charges 20% as a line item alongside media spend.

If the SSP has solid capabilities in determining relevancy and propensity, the quality of the impression goes up, and therefore the conversion rate. In plain English, compare the number of clicks against total cost, and you’ll know which SSP gives you the biggest bang for your buck. 

While visibility and standardization across SSPs would be ideal, competition drives innovation and keeps fees in check. The key is to identify partners, synergies, and efficiencies that allow you to manage at scale effectively. In this complex landscape, there are always common threads—find them, and use them to your advantage.