So you want to build an SSP?

I was asked how to build an SSP. Here’s my answer.

IAB Tech Lab: Achim Schlosser from Bertelsmann

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Marketecture Podcast: Andy Goldberg of PCH

Publishers Clearing House has been around for over 70 years. We hear how they are using sweepstakes to get valuable first-party data and use it throughout the ecosystem.

A field guide to building an SSP

This week a friend-of-a-friend (let’s call him “Sammy Supply”) reached out for advice on starting a new SSP, to which my initial advice was basically don’t do it. This person’s business owns some unique, valuable, and sensitive data, so there is an argument for owning the pipes. I thought it might be instructive to go through my thought process.

Why not curation?

The first line of defense was obviously curation. If you’ve got valuable data and don’t want to broker it directly as a third-party provider, then the next best option is to partner with an SSP and create deal-IDs that represent your data.

Pros:

• Very little technical complexity

• Don’t need to build DSP pipes or change buyer behavior

• No billing

Cons:

• Potential for data leakage

• May not be feasible with sensitive data

In the case of Sammy, the cons outweighed the pros, so we move to option 2.

Get a reseller seat on an exchange

Option 2 is to get Magnite, Index, Pubmatic, or Xandr to give you a seat on their platform and to create an “exchange” without any of your own technology.

Pros:

• Very little technical complexity

• Access to all the buyers on day 1

Cons:

• Some of these exchanges have been shying away from “resellers” and might not take your business, even if you are declared properly in ads.txt

• Paying a 15% vig on your business forever, with little leverage

• Concern about data leakage, especially with sensitive data

For Sammy, these cons also outweighed the pros.

Build an “MVP” exchange on BidSwitch

This isn’t a BidSwitch commercial, I’m just saying that they are a fast and easy way to get started. The barest of bare minimum exchanges would be a prebid.js adapter and a BidSwitch account. The adapter would need to have whatever secret data lookup Sammy is planning on, and I’m not sure you actually would need anything else — you could use BidSwitch’s reporting for billing as well.

Pros:

• Just invest in the parts you need to own

• Get live with your own exchange relatively quickly

Cons:

• Not clear if you could manage Deal IDs or PG deals this way

• Still need buyers to activate your exchange in BidSwitch

• Paying a 5-10% vig on your business

• BidSwitch is going to throttle based on buyer behavior

Build it “for real”

Sammy asked me what type of staffing he might need to build a “real” SSP. Assuming he still is using BidSwitch for some of his connections, and is being scrappy, I told him he needed to build:

• A high performance server that could send out bid requests to multiple parties

• A logging server for impression counting and billing

• A simple UI for reporting and some administration

I told him he could scrape by with a team of 4-5 engineers and 1-2 business people, plus maybe a little help from offshore developers with experience in this area.

What do you think?

Did I get this right? What do you think it takes to build a new SSP in 2025?

Reading list

• Experian acquires Audigent (link)

• Interpublic Group buys retail analytics company Intelligence Node in deal valued at nearly $100 million (link)

• OpenAI exploring advertising (FT) (link)... but Search Engine Land says not so fast… Sama actually hates ads (link)

• Mediaocean Launches Certified Service Partner Program with Interpublic, Omnicom, and WPP (link)

• Apple accused of spying on employees by an ad tech employee (link)

• Terry K with a good article in AdExchanger analyzing the agency holdcos and why Publicis is winning (link)