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direct buys: more or less expensive than RTB? (9)

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Hi i'm curious about peoples experience with mobile direct buys. Are the prices you're quoted higher or lower than you pay for the same placement on RTB?

Because i'm getting quoted much higher prices. The explanation is that your getting first dibs at the premium traffic. But my data doesn't show any improvement in quality.

any similar experiences?

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There is a big different between original quotes, and negotiated prices. Have you tried negotiating them down?

RTBs typically take a 20-30% margin, so by going direct you should try get that extra 20-30% discount.

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This is very common for buying from large sites with sales teams. Pretty much none of them will sell to you for less then what you can at RTB even though they get less through the RTB.

The good news is though on those same sites 1st impressions from a direct buy will perform better than what you get from the RTB. The higher price can still get you a better ROI.

However if you already getting the 1st impression in RTBs then the site is just being stupid, which many are unfortunately. Your best bet at that point is send whoever you are talking with a nice little gift.

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thanks for replies guys. damn i had no idea the RTB margin was so high.

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Depending on where you are buying from and the type of traffic you are buying, margins can even be 60%+ on essentially arbitrage (riskless) basis for the RTB platform.

LOL this is one of the reasons that many RTBs are nowhere near as aggressive at policing fraud as they could be.

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Just play it by the data.

Tell them you can get it for $x.xx CPM from SiteScout, so their quote is unreasonable.

If they respond with saying it's higher quality, then agree to a test that you'll run in parallel with the traffic from the RTB.

If this doesn't back out you can tell them that the quality is not higher, or only 10% higher, and negotiate based on that. It will be pretty hard to sell you bulls**t if you have data from a $200 test showing them that they are wrong, and then you'll have no regrets in not taking the buy.

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RTB does not give you ''first dibs''. In fact RTB is usually much lower down the food chain. If you try and buy from individual placements (that you see on RTB) the prices are often insanely high. As mentioned above you need to negotiate. Most of them are used to BIG deals for app launches and branders so unless you approach them with a big budget you are probably not going to get far. You will almost certainly see much better traffic quality if you go direct.

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thanks for responses guys. yeah that is what i did. direct was about the same quality for me, but 30% higher price.

i gotta upgrade my negotiation skills.

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Sounds like a great business!

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