A floor price is the minimum CPM a publisher will accept before an ad impression goes unfilled or falls to backfill. Set it too high and you lose fill — ad slots run empty while viewers sit through blank screens or house ads. Set it too low and you train the market to underpay for your inventory, depressing CPMs over time. Getting floors right is one of the most direct, controllable levers a CTV publisher has on revenue.
This guide covers what floor prices are, how the fill-rate-versus-CPM trade-off actually works, the difference between soft and hard floors, how to discover the right price for your inventory, and where India CTV publishers typically set floors by content type.
What is a floor price in programmatic CTV?
In a programmatic auction, multiple demand-side platforms (DSPs) bid on your ad impression in real time. The floor price is the minimum bid your SSP (supply-side platform) will accept. Any bid below the floor is rejected, and the impression either passes to a lower-priority demand source or goes unfilled.
Floors exist for three reasons:
- Revenue protection: Without a floor, arbitrage buyers and low-quality demand would clear your inventory at pennies. A floor ensures you do not sell below the value your content environment commands.
- Market signalling: Your floor communicates your inventory's perceived value. Publishers with strong floors are taken more seriously in the market than those who accept any bid.
- Backfill management: When premium demand is absent, a floor ensures the system routes to a backfill source rather than accepting an undervalue bid from the open exchange.
Soft floors vs hard floors: what is the difference?
The distinction between soft and hard floors matters more in practice than most publishers realise.
Hard floors
A hard floor is an absolute minimum. Any bid below the hard floor is rejected, full stop. The impression goes unfilled or to backfill. Hard floors protect against extreme underpricing and are simple to enforce. The risk: if your hard floor is set too aggressively, you lose significant fill without a corresponding CPM uplift — particularly if demand is thin.
Soft floors
A soft floor (sometimes called a reserve price) is a threshold that triggers different auction dynamics. Bids above the soft floor compete normally in the auction and clear at the second price (just above the next-highest bid). Bids below the soft floor may still win, but they clear at the soft floor price rather than the second price — meaning the buyer pays more than they would have in a pure second-price auction. This mechanism is designed to extract more value from buyers who are willing to pay more but are bidding low strategically.
Most modern SSPs offer both options. For CTV publishers in India, hard floors are more common because the technology and sophistication to manage soft floor dynamics is less prevalent among local SSP partners.
The fill rate vs CPM trade-off
The core tension in floor pricing is this: higher floors mean better CPMs on impressions that sell, but lower fill rates. Lower floors mean more impressions fill, but at weaker prices. The goal is to find the floor where total revenue (CPM × fill rate × total impressions) is maximised — not just the one where CPM is highest or fill rate is highest.
A worked example with hypothetical numbers:
- Floor at ₹150: 95% fill rate, ₹180 average CPM → ₹171 effective CPM per available impression
- Floor at ₹300: 75% fill rate, ₹380 average CPM → ₹285 effective CPM per available impression
- Floor at ₹500: 45% fill rate, ₹620 average CPM → ₹279 effective CPM per available impression
In this example, the ₹300 floor maximises revenue despite the lower fill rate. This is the logic of floor optimisation — find the inflection point, not the extremes.
How to discover the right floor price for your inventory
Price discovery is not guesswork. Here are the primary methods:
Bid landscape analysis
Your SSP's reporting should show you the distribution of bids you receive against your inventory — what percentage of bids come in at various price levels. If 80% of bids are above ₹400, your floor at ₹150 is leaving money on the table. If 60% of bids cluster between ₹150 and ₹250, a floor at ₹400 will kill fill. Bid landscape data is the most direct input to floor setting.
A/B floor testing
Most mature SSPs allow you to run floor experiments — serving different floor prices to different portions of your inventory simultaneously. Run ₹200 against ₹350 for two weeks on comparable content inventory, measure total revenue per available impression (not just CPM or fill rate independently), and let the data decide. This is the cleanest method but requires SSP support and a statistically meaningful impression volume.
Benchmark comparison
Your SSP account manager should be able to share category benchmarks — what publishers with comparable content type and audience are clearing in the auction. Use these as a starting point, not as a fixed target. Your content, audience quality, and deal mix will produce different results.
Direct deal feedback
If you sell direct IO deals at ₹600 CPM for live sport, your programmatic floor for live sport should not be ₹150. Direct deal prices are your most concrete evidence of what buyers will pay for your specific inventory in a negotiated context. Use direct rates to anchor programmatic floors.
Floor price segmentation: one floor is usually wrong
A single floor price applied across all inventory is almost always suboptimal. Different inventory deserves different floors:
- By content type: Live sport commands higher floors than archive VOD. Premium originals command higher floors than syndicated content.
- By slot position: The first slot in an ad pod — closest to the content — should carry a higher floor than the third or fourth slot.
- By daypart: Primetime inventory (evening, weekends) commands higher floors than 3am inventory.
- By audience segment: Inventory targeted to a known, high-value audience segment (e.g., logged-in premium subscribers) should carry a higher floor than anonymous inventory.
- By deal type: Floors for open exchange should differ from floors applied to PMP deals, where buyers have already expressed interest in your inventory specifically.
India CTV floor price guidance
India CTV programmatic CPMs are materially lower than US or European benchmarks. Setting floors based on global references will result in 0% fill. Use the following ranges as a starting orientation — actual floors should be calibrated to your bid landscape data:
- Live sport (IPL, other cricket): Industry estimates suggest programmatic floors in the ₹400–₹800 range, though direct deal CPMs for premium sport go significantly higher.
- Premium VOD (originals, recent releases): ₹200–₹450 is a reasonable starting range for programmatic floors.
- General VOD / archive content: ₹100–₹250. Demand is thinner; setting floors too high will result in high unsold rates.
- FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV): ₹80–₹200, depending on channel quality and audience. FAST inventory in India is earlier-stage and programmatic demand is still developing.
These are starting points, not absolutes. Floors should be tested and adjusted based on your actual bid data, not static benchmarks. Review floors at minimum quarterly — India's CTV market is evolving fast enough that a floor set twelve months ago may be significantly miscalibrated today.
The devaluation risk in India
India publishers face a specific risk: accepting very low programmatic CPMs to achieve high fill rates, which trains the market to expect low prices for CTV inventory. Once a price level is established in buyers' bidding algorithms, it is hard to move up. Publishers who hold floors — even at the cost of higher unsold rates in the short term — typically build more valuable inventory positions over the medium term.
Practical floor price management checklist
- Pull bid landscape report from SSP — know where your bids cluster before setting any floor
- Segment floors by content type, daypart, and slot position
- Set a hard floor as a baseline; experiment with soft floors if your SSP supports them well
- Run A/B floor tests on high-volume inventory segments
- Review floors quarterly — at minimum before and after IPL season in India
- Align programmatic floors with direct deal rate cards — the two should be consistent
- Track effective CPM (eCPM) per available impression, not just CPM on filled impressions