Programmatic has always promised efficiency at scale, but buyers know scale alone isn’t the goal. Not all ad inventory is created equal, and today’s media teams are being asked to deliver performance while also answering tougher questions about brand suitability, and where budgets actually end up in the supply chain. That pressure is reshaping how premium spend gets executed.
As media buyers push for greater control and transparency, PMP deals have moved from niche option to center stage. Advertisers are increasingly favoring these invite-only programmatic deals to secure premium placements in brand-safe environments, with fewer surprises than the open exchange.
PMPs Are Outpacing Open Auction Growth
The open exchange is still growing, but at a much slower pace than premium deal paths. In the first eight months of 2024, open exchanges grew about 10% YoY. Over the same period, premium programmatic deals, including PMPs and programmatic guaranteed, grew about 47% YoY. That gap is a clear signal of where buyers are placing incremental budget.
That momentum is reshaping the mix of programmatic spend. In 2020, roughly a quarter of programmatic investment ran through PMPs and similar premium channels. By mid 2024, premium deals were around 48% of programmatic investment and tracking toward 50% by the end of 2024. Private and premium deal paths are approaching half of all programmatic display investment.
Advertisers are prioritizing premium, brand-safe environments and demanding more visibility into where spend goes and how it gets there. At the same time, signal loss and privacy changes are making first-party and contextual strength more valuable, which naturally favors curated supply and tighter buying environments.
Why More Budgets Are Moving to PMPs
As PMPs take a larger share of premium programmatic, the buyer playbook is changing with them. More teams are using private deals as the default starting point for premium supply, then using the open exchange to round out reach. That approach matches how clients evaluate campaigns today. It is easier to plan premium against known environments, and it is easier to justify premium spend when the delivery is tied to curated inventory rather than an unpredictable long tail.
PMPs are also becoming the practical way to enforce buying standards without slowing down execution. When brand suitability requirements tighten, a curated deal is simply cleaner than relying on endless exclusions and post-campaign audits. The result is less time spent policing supply and more time spent optimizing creative, frequency, and audience strategy.
And for performance teams, PMPs are increasingly about consistency. Premium placements and high-impact formats tend to produce more stable signals, which makes optimization less noisy across flights. When outcomes need to be repeatable and defensible, buyers naturally gravitate toward deal paths that reduce variance and keep the media mix anchored in higher-quality environments.
The Simplest Way to Buy Premium with Control
In a PMP, a publisher or supply partner makes a slice of inventory available to a select set of buyers, usually through a Deal ID that you can activate in your DSP. Terms like floors, eligibility rules, and targeting criteria are typically set up in advance. The inventory still clears programmatically, but it runs inside a more controlled environment than the open exchange.
In practice, this gives advertisers a reliable way to access premium inventory without going fully direct. A publisher can reserve certain placements for private buying, then invite the brands that fit the environment and audience. Buyers keep the workflow and optimization benefits of programmatic, while publishers keep guardrails around who advertises on their properties.
It also helps to place PMPs in the broader programmatic direct spectrum. Preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed deals exist for buyers who want fixed pricing or fixed delivery. PMPs often sit in the middle, offering premium access with more control than open auction while keeping auction dynamics and in-flight flexibility.
How Nitro is prioritizing PMPs for advertiser success
Nitro is leaning into the PMP shift in a very practical way. As premium programmatic budgets move toward curated deal paths, we are focused on making private buying easier to activate and easier to optimize against in gaming environments. Nitro, operates a network of 500+ premium gaming websites and sits within the broader Overwolf ecosystem, which includes in-game app and mod platforms. The result is premium gaming supply at meaningful scale, packaged in a way that fits how advertisers want to buy today.
Rather than pushing gaming supply into the open exchange and asking buyers to piece it together, Nitro structures curated private deals that can align to numerous gaming and entertainment communities. The point is to make premium gaming inventory addressable in a way that matches campaign objectives, whether you are an endemic brand looking for context or a non-endemic brand trying to reach younger, tech savvy audiences in environments that make sense.
Our approach to the ad experience emphasizes low ad density and strong user retention, which supports attention and helps premium placements perform as they should. With viewability rates above 85 to 90% on many placements and video completion rates above 85%, our benchmarks are well above what advertisers often see across the open web. For buyers, that means impressions are more likely to be seen, and optimization can be built on cleaner signals.
We’re constantly evolving how advertisers access our supply through the platforms they already run on, and we’re doing it through key partnerships across the ecosystem. That includes direct-path initiatives like The Trade Desk OpenPath and integrations with platforms like Microsoft Monetize. The goal is simple. Fewer unnecessary hops, clearer supply paths, and more control over how budgets are executed against premium gaming inventory.
Nitro connects advertisers with exclusive, high-quality gaming inventory across 500+ premium websites. Our platform offers direct, transparent access to engaged audiences through fast, reliable ad delivery and real-time optimization. With exclusive supply, low-latency serving, and hands-on support, Nitro helps performance-driven buyers reach the right players at the right time.