How to vet an SSP before you integrate

Integrating a new demand partner is deceptively easy. Drop in a tag or an endpoint, add a line to your ads.txt, watch revenue appear. The whole thing can be done between meetings.

Removing one is not easy. The tag has been copied into templates nobody remembers. The ads.txt line has been inherited by your reseller chain. Buyers have built path preferences around it. Six months of reporting history assumes it exists.

So the hour you spend vetting a partner before integration is worth roughly a quarter of the effort spent unwinding one afterwards. Here’s what to ask.

Ask what they take — and how they take it

“Revenue share” is not one number, and the differences are worth real money.

• Is the share taken on gross or net? Twenty percent of gross media spend and twenty percent of what’s left after other deductions are very different figures.
• What else is deducted before you see it? Tech fees, data fees, hosting fees, and ad serving costs are sometimes layered on top of the headline share.
• Do they buy as agent or as principal? An agent takes a disclosed fee for representing your inventory. A principal buys your impression and resells it at whatever price they can get — and that margin is theirs, not disclosed to you. Neither is wrong, but only one lets you calculate what you’re actually earning.

If a partner can’t tell you their take rate in a sentence, that’s your answer. The ad tech tax is not usually one big fee; it’s several small ones nobody itemises.

Ask where they’ll sit in your supply chain

This determines how buyers see your inventory, and it’s the question publishers ask least.

• Will you be DIRECT or RESELLER in my ads.txt? If they’re asking for a DIRECT line, they should be able to show you the matching sellers.json entry where your account reads PUBLISHER. A claim that doesn’t corroborate is worth less to buyers than no claim at all.
• Will you pass a complete SupplyChain object? A partner who breaks the chain makes your inventory look laundered, however clean it is.
• Do you resell my inventory onward? This is the important one. If your new partner also sells your supply into three other exchanges, you’ve just created duplicate paths that compete against your direct one.

Ask about payment before you ask about eCPM

Every partner will quote you a promising eCPM. Far fewer will volunteer their payment terms.

• What are the net terms, and from when? Net 60 from the end of the billing month is nearly ninety days from the impression that earned it.
• Is payment sequentially liable? Many partners pay you only once the buyer pays them. That moves credit risk onto you, and it’s the single clause most worth understanding before you sign — we’ve written it up separately.
• What’s the minimum payout threshold, and what happens below it?
• How are invalid traffic deductions handled? Clawbacks arriving three months later against revenue you’ve already recognised are unpleasant. Ask how they’re calculated and how far back they can reach.

Ask what happens when something breaks

• Who reconciles discrepancies, and what tolerance is considered normal? Agree this before the first month closes, not during the argument.
• What’s the support model? A named contact and a response time, or a shared inbox.
• What’s the notice period? Both directions. A partner who can switch you off with no notice is a revenue risk; one you can’t leave for ninety days is a different one.

Then test on a slice

Whatever the answers, don’t hand over everything on day one. Start with one placement, one format, or one geo — enough volume to be meaningful, little enough that a bad partner costs you a rounding error rather than a quarter. Keep a baseline of what that inventory earned before, because without it you can’t tell growth from cannibalisation.

The takeaway

Vetting an SSP comes down to four questions: what do you take and how, where will you sit in my supply chain, when and under what conditions do I get paid, and what happens when something goes wrong. None require a lawyer. All of them are much easier to ask before you integrate than after — because integration is an afternoon’s work and disentanglement is a quarter’s.

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Lumorrow onboards publishers directly, with a disclosed take rate, a complete SupplyChain object, and a sellers.json entry that matches what you declare. See how it works for publishers →