How to Buy Premium Publisher Advertising Inventory in India

Premium inventory is the part of programmatic buying that feels most like traditional media. You pick specific publishers, agree a price and dates, and book. The difference is that the booking runs through your demand-side platform (DSP), so it shares targeting, frequency control and reporting with the rest of your campaign.

Here is how the process works in India, from shortlist to launch.

What counts as premium publisher inventory?

Premium inventory means known, brand-safe apps, sites and screens that sell their best placements through deals rather than leaving everything to the open auction. In India that usually covers four groups:

• OTT apps such as JioHotstar, ZEE5, SonyLIV, Amazon MX Player, Sun NXT and aha.
• News publishers such as The Times of India, Aaj Tak, Dainik Bhaskar, Moneycontrol, Manorama and Eenadu.
• DOOH networks at airports, metro stations, malls and office parks.
• Native networks such as Taboola and Outbrain.

Our premium inventory page lists what we can set up, with deal types and indicative CPMs.

Which deal type should you use?

Choose by how much control you need over price, volume and placement.

Most premium OTT and large news buys in India run on PG or private deals. Our explainer on PG, PMP and open auction covers the differences in more depth.

How do you buy a premium deal, step by step?

The steps are much the same for OTT, news and DOOH. This is how a Programmatic Guaranteed deal runs through DV360.

1. Write the brief. Include the audience, markets, languages, dates, budget, formats and the KPI you will judge it on.
2. Shortlist publishers. Match them to your audience and language, then check indicative rates and minimum spends.
3. Request a proposal. Ask for the dates, volume or budget, formats, creative specs, targeting options (state, city, language, device) and the CPM. Ask whether a connected TV only option exists if the big screen matters.
4. Negotiate and accept. In DV360, PG proposals go back and forth in the Negotiations area until both sides agree. Check the rate, the impressions and the creative sizes before you accept, because Google's help centre lists creative requirements among the terms that cannot be renegotiated once a proposal is finalised.
5. Configure the deal. After acceptance, the deal is configured in My Inventory, where you choose the advertiser and campaign. DV360 then sets up the PG insertion order automatically, and you assign a creative for each size and duration. Google recommends doing this at least one to two days before launch.
6. Clear creatives. Make sure each asset meets the publisher's specs. Google warns that PG deals may under-deliver if you choose creatives that need VPAID, so use standard video files.
7. Launch and check early. Look at delivery within the first day or two and fix problems before they cost you volume.

Preferred Deals and PMPs are simpler. The publisher sends the deal or shares a deal ID, you add it to your inventory and target it from a line item, and for a PMP you bid at or above the floor price.

Who does this work depends on your setup. With a self-serve DV360 account, your traders run these steps in your own account and can ask us to set up private deals. With our DV360 Managed Service, our team handles the whole process and you approve the plan.

What do premium deals cost, and what are the minimums?

Each publisher sets its own price and minimum. These are the indicative figures from our channel guides, before GST, and every rate is confirmed for your dates.

Connected TV only buys and language or region targeting often cost a little more than the base rate. More detail is on our OTT and connected TV, news publisher and DOOH pages. For choosing between apps, see our guide on how to plan an OTT campaign, and for screens, what programmatic DOOH is.

How far ahead should you book?

Earlier than you think. PG deals take time because publishers have to confirm inventory for your dates, then both sides need to configure the deal and clear creatives.

For routine deals, allow at least a couple of weeks between brief and launch so there is time for proposals, approvals and creative checks, and ask each publisher for its own lead time. For the IPL, big cricket tournaments and Diwali, start several weeks earlier, because premium inventory on those dates sells out. Our OTT campaign planning guide gives the same warning for match days and festive weeks on OTT apps.

Can you negotiate premium rates?

Yes, within limits. Publishers have more room when you give them flexibility. The main levers are:

• Dates. Off-peak weeks cost less than festive or tournament weeks.
• Placement. Run of section or run of app is cheaper than homepage or app launch slots.
• Screen. Mobile and mixed-device delivery cost less than connected TV only.
• Commitment. Several flights across a quarter can earn a better rate than one burst.
• Deal type. A Preferred Deal or PMP can cost less than PG if you can live without guaranteed volume.

Our guide on how to reduce CPM has more ways to bring prices down without losing quality.

Why do premium deals under-deliver, and how do you fix it?

Shortfalls often come from settings on the buyer's side, so check these before you go back to the publisher:

• Targeting on the line item that is narrower than the deal, such as an extra audience list, city or device filter.
• Creatives in the wrong size or length, or video that needs VPAID.
• Frequency caps that are too tight for the volume you booked.
• On a PMP, a bid below the floor price.
• A deal that was accepted but never configured or attached.
• Exclusion lists that block the publisher's own app or domain.

Watch quality as well as volume. Ask the publisher about expected viewability and check it in your reports, as covered in our guide on how to improve ad viewability.

How do you know whether a premium deal was worth it?

Judge it on what it added, not on its CPM. A premium deal will nearly always look expensive next to open auction, so compare it on the things you paid extra for.

• Delivery against the booking. Did the deal deliver the impressions you agreed, on the dates you agreed?
• Attention. Premium OTT video should show strong completion rates, because the ads play inside shows people chose to watch. For news deals, compare viewability with your open auction display lines.
• Reach your other lines missed. Compare unique reach for the deal with your YouTube and auction lines. Our guide on how to measure incremental reach explains the method.
• Brand outcomes. Google's Brand Lift in DV360 does not measure non-YouTube Programmatic Guaranteed inventory, so for OTT PG deals you may need a study run by the publisher or an independent research firm, where one is available.

If a deal delivered on time, held attention and reached people your other lines did not, it earned its premium. If it only matched what cheaper lines delivered, move that money next time.

Premium deals work best as part of a wider plan, with auction lines adding scale around them. Our guide on how to create a programmatic media plan shows how to fit them together.

Next step

Name the PG and PMP deals you are interested in when you ask for a free media plan. A DV360 specialist sends back an indicative minimum and rate for each one, flags any deal your budget is too small for, and checks availability for your dates.