Reference library · Inventory pricing
Programmatic Guaranteed
Programmatic Guaranteed is a one-to-one automated deal in which buyer and seller agree in advance on a fixed CPM and a fixed volume of impressions, then the campaign is transacted and delivered through programmatic infrastructure instead of an open auction. Price and inventory are reserved before flight starts, so there is no bidding and no auction-driven price variance. It gives the reach and price certainty of a direct-sold deal with the trafficking speed of programmatic.
Worked example
A buyer negotiates a PG deal for a mid-market video property: 5,000,000 impressions at a fixed CPM of €18, locked before flight. Total committed spend: (5,000,000 / 1,000) x €18 = €90,000, due in full regardless of how the open auction CPM moves during the campaign. If the same inventory trades at €14 CPM in the exchange during a low-demand week, the buyer still pays €90,000, having exchanged that price risk for guaranteed volume and placement.
How it is used
Planners use PG when guaranteed delivery matters more than chasing the lowest auction price: premium placements, homepage takeovers, sponsored video pods, or inventory where brand safety terms need to be fixed in a contract rather than left to real-time bidding rules. There is no formula to solve, what gets negotiated and tracked is simply fixed CPM x committed volume = guaranteed spend, set at signing rather than derived from auction performance. Because that spend is fixed, planners can forecast budget with certainty across the flight. The mistake practitioners make is treating the PG rate as fair value on its own instead of checking it against live auction CPMs for the same inventory before signing.
The common mistake
Buyers commonly lock a PG CPM without benchmarking it against real-time auction pricing for equivalent inventory, so they pay a premium the open market would have beaten on most days.