Case Study: Philly.com achieves 200% CPM lift and programmatic revenue growth with OpenX Bidder

How OpenX Bidder became Philly.com’s “2nd best salesperson”

Philadelphia Media Network (Philly.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) wanted to maximize digital ad revenue and better understand the true value of its inventory, while protecting reserved direct-sold campaigns. Concerned that programmatic and direct sales were treated separately, the publisher sought a way to unlock more yield without disrupting guaranteed buys.

Philly implemented OpenX’s SSP and OpenX Bidder to compete across all inventory with a dedicated support team and a controlled test to safeguard reservations. The result: no impact to guaranteed campaigns, the ability to benchmark direct-sold rate cards, and major revenue gains — including 2x growth in OpenX CPMs, a 300% increase in PMP programmatic mix and an overall ~200% CPM lift, making Bidder “like our second-best salesperson.”

Philly.com

Martin Calhoun

Director, Digital Advertising Operations and Yield Management