Understanding Deals on Place Exchange

Deals represent pre-negotiated contract terms between publishers and buyers (advertisers). Deals are often constructs used to offer set (sometimes preferred) pricing to certain buyers or to identify specific inventory segments targeted for a given campaign. Through Place Exchange, some deals are auto-generated (for example, 'PX-AOD' deals) to enable buyers to more easily find inventory on some buying platforms such as The Trade Desk through their deal libraries.

Auction Type

Place Exchange Module

You can set the Auction Type when creating a Deal. Place Exchange supports the following auction types:

  • First-Price (at=1) – The bid from the DSP with the highest bid price over the bidfloor value wins the auction. The winner pays their bidprice.
  • Second-Price (at=2) – The bid from the DSP with the highest bid price over the bidfloor wins. The winner pays the higher of the following:
    • 2nd highest bid + $.01
    • bidfloor + $.01
    • bidprice if the 2nd highest bid is greater than the bidprice. This is possible when a higher priority deal bid wins but does not have the highest bidprice.
  • Fixed-Price (at=3) – The DSP submitting the highest bid wins the auction. The winner pays the bidfloor, provided their winning bid is greater than or equal to the bidfloor. When determining the highest bidder, the system evaluates fixed-price deal bids at the bidfloor price. These bids always clear at the fixed price regardless of competing bid values.

BidFloor

Place Exchange Module

The bidfloor establishes the minimum price the system requires for a bid to remain eligible for a deal. For Fixed-Price deals (at=3), the bid floor also serves as the exact price at which the deal clears.

Name

The system uses this field as a unique label to identify a specific deal across all platform operations. Users assign a string (for example, DEAL1) to represent the deal in reporting and configuration interfaces.

Token

Place Exchange Module

Buyers see this value within their DSP, and the industry frequently refers to this field as the Deal ID. Place Exchange generates the token by concatenating the publisher's organization.name with the deal.name (for example, DEMOPUB_DEAL1).

Types of deal

Place Exchange Module

Place Exchange supports the following types of deals:

  • Open Auction (OA) – This deal type provides always-available supply via standard openRTB workflows. It requires no deal arrangement or targeting between the publisher and the buyer.
  • Place Exchange Always-On Deal (Place Exchange-AOD) – Place Exchange curates inventory into Always-On Deals to highlight high-demand venues and asset types. These deals simplify how buyers discover and target Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) assets within their DSP.

    • Similar to open auction, this type of deal requires no deal arrangement or upfront commitment between the publisher and the buyer. By convention, the system labels these as "PX Always-On Deals".

    Examples:

    • PLACEEXCHANGE_DOOH_HIGHWAYS_ROADSIDE
    • PLACEEXCHANGE_DOOH_MALLS
  • Non-Guaranteed – Non-Guaranteed (NG) deals represent a private arrangement between a publisher and one or more buyers (either a DSP, an Agency, and/or an Advertiser). In this deal type, participants activate custom-fit deals to meet specific media goals, though these arrangements carry no spend or availability guarantees.

    • A Private Marketplace (PMP) deal, which includes the NG type, requires a deal arrangement between the publisher and the buyer This coordination ensures that both parties configure the deal identifier correctly across all systems for each campaign.

    While publishers and buyers occasionally configure PMP-NG deals as "Always-On," this setup occurs infrequently.

    Examples:

    • publisher-name_awayson-deal-name
    • publisher-name_advertiser-deal-name
  • Guaranteed – A Guaranteed deal represents a private arrangement between a publisher and a single buyer. The publisher grants the buyer higher priority in the auction; in exchange, the buyer guarantees specific spend levels and inventory availability.

    • A PMP deal (includes PG) requires a deal arrangement between the publisher and the buyer to configure the "deal" correctly across all systems for each campaign.

    The system identifies a guaranteed deal by the priority flag on the deal object. Users must set this flag to "10" to signal a guarantee. Setting the flag to any other value indicates to the system that the deal is non-guaranteed.

    Examples:

    • publisher-name_advertiser-deal-name
    • publisher-name_custom-deal-name

    Notes:

    • Many DSPs disable internal pacing and targeting for Guaranteed Deals because they expect the publisher to manage the delivery speed. Consequently, if a publisher sends traffic that exceeds the campaign budget, some DSPs may continue to spend beyond the allocated amount.
    • While Place Exchange supports signaling the notion of a Deal, it does not function as a publisher adserver. In non-exclusive deal scenarios, Place Exchange expects an external Publisher Ad Server to handle targeting and identify which requests correspond to specific deals.

PMP (Private Marketplace)

An invitation-only auction where premium publishers sell their ad space to a select group of advertisers.

You can set up deals via the API, under Deal Management in the Publisher Portal, or by emailing help@placeexchange.com.

For more details on the different elements in deals, see: https://developers.placeexchange.com/explore/api-publisher/nodes/api-commons/files/commons.oas2.yml/definitions/deal.

You can associate deals with publisher inventory via the API, in the Order Management section of the Publisher Portal, or by emailing help@placeexchange.com.

When processing an adrequest, Place Exchange retrieves and aggregates associated deals from both the placement and the adrequest itself. If a user associates a deal with a Placement at the network level, the system automatically appends those deals to every ad request originating from ad units within that network.

You can remove previously associated deals via the API, in the Order Management section of the Publisher Portal, or by emailing help@placeexchange.com.

Publishers can inject deals directly into an individual adrequest. This typically occurs when a publisher uses an integration that maps deals to a specific campaign or internal construct. By injecting deals at the request level, publishers can manage budgeting and prioritize deal delivery within their own external systems, independent of the platform's native settings.