Organizing Inventory

Place Exchange defines three main constructs to organize and manage media owner inventory. You can use each construct to segment inventory, apply configurations, and expose information to demand partners:

Place Exchange Contains Configure Open RTB Equivalent
Organization Network auctions, measurement, restrictions, deals publisher
Network AdUnit auctions, measurement, branding, restrictions, deals site or app
AdUnit --- auctions, assets slots, measurement, locations, restrictions, deals tagid

Note: Org and Network information are visible to demand partners for targeting and reporting purposes (details vary depending on a given DSP's capabilities). For information on configuring this representation, see sections for branding in the Orgs and Networks pages of our API documentation

The following video covers inventory management, creating a network, managing screen updates, and helpful resources.

Organizations represent the highest level of inventory grouping and serve as the parent container for other constructs in Place Exchange. Typically, each publisher maps to a single org, though many have another as a sandbox test org.

Organizations serve a few purposes:

  • Control user roles and permissions
  • Customize the presentation of a publisher to Buy-side platforms

Publishers with complex workflows or access control needs may best be represented as multiple orgs. Contact your Account Manager if any of the below applies:

  • Independent markets or business units with unique access control requirements
  • Multiple integrations required for different systems or segments of inventory
  • Require a sandbox org for testing purposes

Networks act as high-level tools that group multiple AdUnit instances. Specifically, they serve the following primary purposes:

  • Provide a way to create defaults shared between many AdUnits (for example, pricing, restrictions)
  • Customize the end-user experience (for example, Call-to-Action prompts)
  • Customize the presentation of inventory to Buy-side platforms

Some common methods of mapping inventory to a network:

  • Each market as a network – This method provides significant benefits if you frequently sell inventory regionally, such as by designated market area (DMA) or city, or if you maintain uniform pricing across markets.
  • Each contract as a network – Networks provide a better abstraction than AdUnits if your reporting requires you to break out revenue by contract.
  • Each category of asset as a network – This method provides a significant advantage if you manage multiple asset types, such as billboards, street furniture, or kiosks, and you frequently sell inventory based on these types. This setup proves particularly beneficial if your assets require different measurement providers, such as Geopath or Nielsen.

Note: DSPs that offer publisher-level targeting for OOH inventory typically enable this feature at the network level. Place Exchange accomplishes this by passing network publisher designations as the app.bundle parameter in DSP bid requests. To learn which DSPs support this feature, contact your Account Manager.

AdUnits are the key method used to map a publisher's modeling of their inventory into sellable units. AdUnits represent the lowest granularity of inventory and encapsulate all the information necessary to sell, including:
  • Creative characteristics, such as height, width, formats, supported mime types.
  • Publisher restrictions, such as blocked advertisers, content, or attributes.
  • Floor pricing, supported currency, auction types, such as 1st price, floor price.

Some common patterns for mapping inventory to AdUnits:

  • Each "Face" as an AdUnit – Especially for outdoor assets like billboards or street furniture that are commonly sold or media planned against individually.
  • Each "Site" as an AdUnit – Especially for indoor assets like screens located in stores, offices, or stations where they may be commonly sold as a group.

    • Note: Some publishers may have multiple screens within a location that are linked and play synced content. In these cases, a single AdUnit is typically mapped to represent this grouping of synced screens.

  • Each "Interaction Mode" as an AdUnit – Especially for assets integrated into user workflows like retail POS (for example, an advertising-only vs. a mid-transaction user flow with different divisions of the screen layout, pricing).