I hate to disagree with you Gareth but I think you're mising the forest for the trees on this one. Regardless of what a fair margin is the bid that wins the impression is the one that offers the most value for at that time, if a publisher had a better monetization option they'd use it.
Publishers shot themselves in the foot by moving to a first price aution. In a second price world buyers had to compete agasint each other, in a first price world there is no reason to compete. You are losing value with every auction you win, since you are by defintion paying above market price if you win. This incentivizes DSPs to continually lower bid prices and a low tide sinks all boats, as we see year on year with CPMs continuing to fall.
If you want to talk margins I'd love to compare the average DSP margin to the average SSP and see who is more 'greedy'.
I hate to disagree with you Gareth but I think you're mising the forest for the trees on this one. Regardless of what a fair margin is the bid that wins the impression is the one that offers the most value for at that time, if a publisher had a better monetization option they'd use it.
Publishers shot themselves in the foot by moving to a first price aution. In a second price world buyers had to compete agasint each other, in a first price world there is no reason to compete. You are losing value with every auction you win, since you are by defintion paying above market price if you win. This incentivizes DSPs to continually lower bid prices and a low tide sinks all boats, as we see year on year with CPMs continuing to fall.
If you want to talk margins I'd love to compare the average DSP margin to the average SSP and see who is more 'greedy'.