There are quite a few Supply Side Platforms on the market. What product features would make a new one stand out? Or just name the most important features of an SSP solution, please.

This question was asked on Quora.com, below is my answer.

The primary customer of the Supply Side Platform is the publisher. Most features are geared toward publisher needs. Access to demand is the paramount feature. Maximizing publisher yield over the long-term is also critically important. Companies that were already yield optimizers have taken the lead in the online display SSP space.

Additional features found in the top-shelf SSPs are reporting insights into the demand (i.e. who’s buying the inventory) as well as incorporating pricing intelligence into audience segments (i.e. what are my users worth). Armed with these two tools, a publisher is empowered to make more informed direct sales.

In fact, some SSPs are building utilities so support those direct sales efforts via the RTB protocol. This is being referred to in the industry as “programmatic trading” or “programmatic buying and selling”.

I think these are all stand out features of SSPs. Then there’s the one that doesn’t get mentioned too much: scale. Scale is probably the toughest challenge a Supply Side Platform will face. Consider that a killer feature, as well.