Media planning has become even more data-intensive than ever before. Advertisers are purchasing media inventories on websites, applications, connected television, out-of-home media, and other media formats. Therefore, the task of searching for media inventory is not easy. Media planners must know where and how they can place their ads, what audience they can reach via such placement, and if the inventory source meets their campaign requirements. Here comes the role of the inventory discovery tools. Not all such tools provide enough transparency and usability. The DESSY’s Inventory Discovery Tool is meant to change it.

What Is an Inventory Discovery Tool?

Inventory discovery tool is designed to assist media planners to discover and assess the available inventory prior to running their campaigns.

Depending on the particular tool used, planners will have access to various pieces of information on available inventory like: inventory type, publisher, ad formats, device, geography, demographic information, etc. The main objective here is to allow media planners to make more informed decisions regarding their inventory choice before investing money in a specific campaign.

How Is DESSY’s Inventory Discovery Tool Unique?

1. More Structured Inventory Research With the help of DESSY’s Inventory Discovery Tool, one gets access to the structured inventory data, enabling media planners to filter out possible opportunities using certain criteria. In this way, it is not necessary to manually go through all the spreadsheets, websites, and sources while researching inventory.

2. Improved Visibility Before Campaign Activation One of the problems that media planners might face is a lack of visibility with regard to the available inventory before finalizing the campaign plan. The inventory discovery tool allows one to have insight into the potential placements and inventory properties before activation of the campaign. For instance, if a planner is building up a mobile campaign, the media planner would like to know something about the mobile inventory, its formats, the list of the publishers and other properties.

3. Facilitates Comparison of Opportunities for Media Planners Having discovered one suitable source of inventory is good but finding out which among several inventory sources would fit better is what media planning is all about. DESSY’s data would help in this by enabling planners to examine several opportunities for inventory using inventory attributes related to those opportunities. This is done without having to consider every opportunity individually since all necessary data will be available. It will come in handy if a campaign has different requirements such as particular devices, ads, geographies or media environments.

4. Saves Manual Labor Inventory research is known to require much labour on the part of media planners. A planner has to go through different websites, collect data, put it into spreadsheets and then make comparisons. That is time-consuming and may lead to inconsistencies. Incorporation of inventory discovery process into the tool allows for saving some time.

5. Enables Informed Decisions About Media The good discovery tool should be able to answer the following questions:

• What inventory exists?
• Where will the campaign run?
• What type of ads is supported?
• What devices/environments are available?
• What inventory options fit campaign’s needs?
• How can those opportunities be compared?

It is in such a context that the Inventory Discovery Tool by DESSY was designed, to bring those questions into the planning process so that users could make their decisions based on available inventory information.

Importance of Inventory Discovery for Modern Media Planning

Since digital marketing has become more fragmented, media planners have increased options when choosing an inventory. Although multiple choices could be an advantage, such a situation complicates the planning process. With the help of inventory discovery tools, media planners get an opportunity to facilitate the inventory exploration process.

The goal of DESSY’s Inventory Discovery Tool is to make inventory exploration process more manageable for media planners discovering, exploring, comparing, and understanding inventory prior to campaign execution.

Conclusion

Inventory discovery has become an integral component of modern media planning. Whereas many tools can provide information on inventory, the actual value of the tool is its applicability in the context of planning.

DESSY’s Inventory Discovery Tool is developed based on the needs of media planners helping them with structured inventory exploration, increased visibility, comparison, and minimized manual research efforts. In other words, for media planners, inventory research will be not only a search through different information sources but also discovery of opportunities for a campaign and their efficient evaluation.

Inventory Discovery Tool: Understanding available Advertising Inventory and its Data

In programmatic advertising, there are a lot of digital advertising inventory that includes web pages, mobile apps, connected TV (CTV), videos, audio and other types of digital platforms that advertisers can work with. Nevertheless, simply having inventory is not enough. Advertisers also need to know how it is possible to reach users through these platforms and what advertising opportunities they may provide.

That is where a tool for inventory discovery comes in handy. It is used by advertisers and media buyers in order to analyse available advertising inventory and get valuable information about it.

What is an Inventory Discovery Tool?

An inventory discovery tool is an advertising system or feature that enables advertisers to search through and analyse the advertising inventory that is currently available. It can be explained simply as a search engine for advertising. Rather than looking through thousands of websites and applications manually, the advertiser is able to use this feature to discover the inventory in accordance with certain criteria.

Depending on the platform used, the inventory discovery tool may enable the user to browse through inventory that is available via the following criteria:

• Website or application
• Country or location
• Device type
• Ad format and size
• Content Category
• Audience
• Publisher
• Supply Source
• Impressions Estimate

The list of criteria will differ depending in the platform, but the core purpose of the tool remains the same.

Why is inventory Discovery Important?

The programmatic ads world has millions of advertising opportunities. Without an inventory discovery tool, it is hard for advertisers to get acquainted with the actual possibilities. Before starting a campaign, an advertiser may want to know

• What applications provide this kind of inventory?
• What amount of inventory is there?
• What locations can be covered?
• On which devices and OS is it possible to reach the target audience?
• What kind of content is available?

This will help them conduct their media planning process more thoughtfully. Inventory discovery may also allow buyers to learn about some new publishers and sources of supply that they were unaware of before.

What type of Data Could One Obtain from Inventory Discovery?

Publisher inventory Data

Some tools could provide information about the websites where advertising inventory is being offered. The information includes:

• Website domain
• Name of the mobile app
• Publisher’s name
• Category of publisher
• Supply source
• Inventory type

Geographical Information

Geography plays an important role in the planning of campaigns. The discovery of inventory reveals the geographical areas from which inventory comes. Based on the platform, the following geographical data can be obtained:

• Country
• State/region
• City
• Market
• Language

This makes it easier to find the matching supply to the geographical criteria of the campaign.

Device and Entertainment

Advertising inventory can be found in various devices and environments. The inventory discovery process helps the advertisers learn about the availability of their ads. The following information can be obtained from inventory discovery process:

• Desktop
• Mobile web
• Mobile app
• Tablet
• Connected TV
• Operating system
• Browser
• Device type

Ad Format and Creative Sizes

It is important for advertisers to know if their creatives can be placed within available inventories. It lists ad formats like:

• Display (sizes like: 300×250, 300×600, etc)
• Video
• Native
• Audio
• CTV
• Rich media

This enables advertisers to know whether their current creatives can be placed, or additional creative sizes will be needed.

Estimated Impression and Inventory Volume

It includes information like

• Estimated impressions
• Available impressions
• Daily inventory volume
• Traffic estimates
• Historical supply information

It enables buyers to see if there is enough volume. Actual number of impressions may vary depending on such factors as targeting, competition, bidding, budget and frequency.

Content and category details

Common categories in discovery tools are News, sports, entertainment, finance, technology, travel, automotive, gaming, lifestyle. This allows advertisers to identify relevant environments for their campaigns and whether the inventory suits their brans needs.

Audience Details

In addition, some inventory discovery platforms also give the audience details. They can include:

• Demographic details
• Interests
• Affinity categories
• Behavioural segments
• Reach of the audience

The estimates of the audience do not guarantee that every impression will be delivered to the same audience. This is dependent on the platform, data availability and campaign settings.

Conclusion

Inventory discovery tool assists advertisers in having an enhanced understanding of the programmatic advertising ecosystem. This tool assists advertisers in knowing the source of inventory, what kind of formats and devices the inventory is compatible with. Location and content categories and the total amount of potential inventory that might be available.

With the use of such information prior to initiating a campaign, advertisers will be able to make sound decisions regarding their choices of supply, targeting, creatives and media planning. In the highly complicated programmatic ecosystem, inventory discovery tool offers visibility to convert huge opportunities for advertisements into media planning.

Media planning is becoming increasingly challenging with growing ad inventory in various digital platforms such as websites, mobile applications, CTV, DOOH, audio ads and many others, in this case, there is a need to have a proper means through which one will discover available advertising inventory and determine whether it can suit their needs. In this case and inventory discovery tool comes in handy as it will assist media planners to explore various inventory opportunities.

What is an Inventory Discovery Tool?

It is an online tool through which media planners and advertisers can learn about available advertising inventories across various publishers, websites, applications, devices, fomrats, geographic locations and media channels.

Instead of carrying out manual research of hundreds of websites or publishers, planners can use the tool to find inventory on the basis of following criteria:

• Ad format & size
• Website or application
• Type of device
• Geographic location
• Content category
• Available impressions
• Reach
• Media channel
• Characteristics of audience

They can make a better decision about where they should allocate their advertising budget by using the information.

1. Discover Available Ad Inventory Finding available advertising inventory is one of the purposes of using an inventory discovery tool by media planners. A planner might require display advertising inventory for campaign targeting certain types of publishers.
2. Understand availability of inventory It is not sufficient just to know if the publisher or website exists. Media planners should also understand if there is sufficient inventory available to launch a campaign. An inventory discovery tool provides valuable information like estimated impressions, volume of inventory, available formats, etc. This will help a planner to understand if certain inventory source has potential to cover the necessary scale for a campaign.
3. Compare Different Sources of Inventory In many cases media planners have several options how to reach their target audience. An inventory discovery tool allows comparing various websites, apps, publishers or media channels on the basis of available data. A planner can compare: Website inventory vs app inventory, Desktop vs mobile inventory, Display vs video inventory, publisher categories, geographic markets, etc.
4. Plan Campaign more effectively Media planning is process of researching, analysing, forecasting and making decisions. Doing manual inventory research takes quite some time, particularly if there is need for multi-channel or multi-market campaigns.Inventory discovery tools bring all relevant inventory data together in one place. Planners can use filter and search capabilities to select the most relevant options from a huge number of possibilities. Thus, they will be able to devote less time to searching and more time to the development of media strategy.
5. Facilitate Audience and Targeting Choices Analyse of inventory could also help with targeting choices. Depending on which tool is used, the planner would have the ability to analyse inventory according to different aspects, such as geography, content categories, devices, environments, or audience related parameters. It should be noted that the tool does not replace audience analysis but provides helpful data at the inventory level.
6. Enhance Budget Distribution Strategy The task of media planner is not only to discover the inventory but to decide how to use money efficiently on advertising in order to generate potential value. With the help of comparing of inventory volumes, formats, channels and other parameters, the planner will be able to build more intelligent distribution of budget.
7. Assistance in Campaign Forecasting The information about the inventory can also be useful for the process of campaign forecasting. When planning the launch of a campaign, it is necessary to estimate whether there is sufficient inventory might change over time, early information can assist in creating more realistic expectations of campaigns and the availability of inventory.

Conclusion

The inventory discovery tool can be considered an important aid for modern media planners. With the help of this tool, media planners can investigate, analyse, compare and evaluate the available advertising inventory before media buying. From searching for the new sources of inventory and the amount of available impressions to comparison of different media channels and budget distribution, this tool allows streamlining the process of planning.

Above all, the inventory discovery provides media planners with important information about the advertising environment. With this information at hand, media planners are able to develop more effective media plans.