What is a private auction in CTV and how does it differ from a PMP?

A private auction (also called an invitation-only auction or closed auction) is a real-time bidding auction where the publisher restricts participation to a selected group of buyers — typically an advertiser, their DSP, or a small group of preferred buyers. Unlike a PMP (private marketplace deal), a private auction does not involve pre-negotiated pricing or volume commitments — it is still a competitive real-time auction. The key difference from open auction: only invited buyers see and can bid on the inventory. This gives publishers control over who appears in their content without the fixed pricing commitment of a PG deal. For buyers, a private auction invitation provides access to inventory that is not available in open programmatic, with competitive pricing still determined by the auction.

PMP (private marketplace) and private auction are often used interchangeably in industry conversation, but there is a technical distinction: a private auction is specifically a non-guaranteed, real-time auction restricted to invited buyers. A PMP deal typically involves a pre-negotiated floor price set by the publisher and a deal ID that routes specific inventory to the buyer — the buyer still bids in real time but against a known floor. In practice, India CTV publishers structure most private deals as PMPs (deal ID + floor) rather than pure invite-only auctions without floors, because the floor protects yield. When a publisher offers a “preferred deal” in India CTV — a fixed CPM at which the buyer has first right of refusal before open auction — this is a distinct deal type sitting between PMP and programmatic guaranteed.

Private auction or PMP is preferable to open auction when: (1) You need guaranteed content adjacency — open auction buys inventory across all a publisher’s supply, including remnant positions; a PMP deal can be structured to specific content categories. (2) The publisher’s premium inventory is not available in open auction — many India CTV publishers ringfence their highest-demand inventory (sports, prime-time slots) for deal-based buying only. (3) You need a brand safety guarantee from the publisher — deal-based buying gives a contractual content environment assurance that open auction cannot provide. Open auction is preferable when: budget is limited (no deal minimums), campaign objectives are reach-focused and content adjacency is secondary, or the DSP’s algorithm can achieve your goal more efficiently across many publishers than one publisher at a deal floor.