Every CTV publisher has two categories of inventory: premium, which earns high CPMs through direct sales and carefully managed programmatic deals, and remnant, which goes to the open exchange after premium demand has been satisfied. The gap between the two is substantial — premium CTV inventory can earn three to five times the CPM of comparable remnant inventory. Managing both effectively, and progressively upgrading remnant to premium, is one of the highest-value yield strategies available to India CTV publishers.
This article explains the distinction, why the gap exists, and the practical strategies for narrowing it.
What is premium CTV inventory?
Premium inventory is broadly defined as ad slots sold through high-value channels with strong targeting, clear context, and committed buyer relationships. The defining characteristics:
- Sold direct or via PMP: Premium inventory is often sold through IO deals (direct insertion orders) or private marketplace (PMP) deals where a specific buyer or set of buyers has been curated. The publisher controls who buys and at what price.
- Contextually valuable: Live sport, premium originals, news, and entertainment from well-known brands attract premium buyers. The content environment justifies the CPM.
- Audience-verified: Logged-in user data, demographic targeting, and clean first-party signals that buyers trust. Premium inventory has an audience story that remnant typically does not.
- Brand-safe: Category and content-level brand safety assurances that advertisers cannot get from open exchange inventory.
- Non-skippable, full-screen: Standard in CTV, but premium inventory typically has stronger completion rate data to support the claim.
What is remnant CTV inventory?
Remnant inventory is what remains after premium demand has been filled. It goes to the open programmatic exchange where any eligible buyer can bid. The defining characteristics of remnant:
- No committed buyer — whoever bids highest in the open auction wins
- No guaranteed CPM — clearing price depends on real-time demand, which varies significantly
- Less audience signal — remnant may include anonymous or lower-quality traffic where first-party data is absent
- Lower CPMs — open exchange competition in India CTV is limited, meaning remnant often clears at the floor or near it
Remnant is not a failure — it is a natural feature of yield management. Even premium publishers have remnant inventory. The question is what percentage of total inventory is remnant and at what price it clears.
Why the premium-remnant CPM gap is large in India
In India's CTV market, the gap between premium and remnant CPMs is particularly wide. Several structural factors drive this:
Thin programmatic demand
Few DSPs actively bid on India CTV open exchange inventory. The demand-side ecosystem for programmatic CTV in India is significantly less developed than in the US or UK. This means remnant inventory clears at weak prices because competitive bidding is limited. Industry estimates suggest open exchange India CTV CPMs regularly fall in the ₹80–₹200 range, while direct or PMP deals for comparable content types achieve ₹400–₹1,000+.
Buyer concentration in direct deals
India's major CTV advertisers — FMCG companies, auto brands, financial services — primarily buy through direct relationships with large platforms like JioCinema, Hotstar, and Sony LIV. The programmatic open exchange receives spillover budget, not primary budget. This means remnant inventory competes for a smaller pool of programmatic buyers.
Limited audience data in the open exchange
On the open exchange, buyers often bid blind — they know the content type and device type but have limited audience signal. Buyers pay a premium when they know who they are reaching. Remnant inventory, which often lacks strong audience signals in the bid request, commands lower bids.
Strategies to manage remnant inventory
You cannot eliminate remnant, but you can minimise it and improve its clearing price.
1. Use remnant as direct-deal overflow
Before routing remnant to the open exchange, check whether any of your direct or PMP buyers have unused budget in the current period. Some publishers operate a daily or weekly check with direct buyers to offer remnant at a preferred price — lower than the direct deal rate but higher than open exchange. This converts remnant into a second tier of direct revenue rather than leaving it to the exchange.
2. Build private marketplace deals for remnant tiers
A PMP deal with a defined buyer group at a defined floor converts what would otherwise be open exchange remnant into a managed transaction. The CPM is lower than direct IO but higher than open exchange. Publishers who invest in building PMP relationships across multiple buyer categories — retail, FMCG, auto, financial services — reduce their dependence on open exchange remnant significantly.
3. Improve audience signal in remnant bid requests
If your SSP integration passes minimal audience data for remnant inventory, you are limiting how much buyers will bid. Passing content genre, content rating, device type, geography, and where appropriate consent-compliant user segment data, allows buyers to bid more precisely. Better signals in the bid request produce higher bids from programmatic buyers — this alone can improve remnant CPMs by 20–40% in markets with reasonable programmatic demand.
4. Set meaningful floors for open exchange remnant
Do not set zero floors on remnant. This is a common mistake. A zero or very low floor trains the market to expect cheap prices for your inventory — including buyers who would have paid more. Set floors on remnant at a minimum that still reflects the value of a CTV impression: even remnant CTV inventory should not clear below ₹80–₹100 in India. Review these floors quarterly.
5. House ads and backfill as the final backstop
Inventory that cannot fill even at remnant prices should run house ads (promoting your own content library, subscription offers, or app downloads) rather than running blank. House ads have no CPM revenue but preserve viewer experience and can drive internal business metrics — subscriber conversion, content discovery, platform engagement.
Strategies to upgrade remnant to premium
The longer-term goal is to move inventory up the value chain — converting open exchange remnant into PMP deals, and PMP deals into direct relationships.
Audience development
Premium buyers pay for premium audiences. If you can demonstrate consistent, verified reach among high-value demographics — young professionals, SEC A households, category intenders — you have a story to tell that converts remnant to premium. Investing in audience data infrastructure (login walls, content personalisation, first-party data capture) is a precondition for this.
Content investment
Premium content attracts premium inventory demand. Original content, live events, exclusive rights — these attract buyers who want contextual alignment that open exchange remnant cannot provide. Content strategy and yield strategy are not separate for a CTV publisher.
Direct sales capability
Many India CTV publishers have no direct sales function. They rely entirely on SSPs and programmatic channels. Building a direct sales team — even a small one — that can sell packages, sponsorships, and IO deals converts the publisher's best inventory from programmatic to direct. This is the highest-impact structural shift a mid-tier India CTV publisher can make for yield.
India publisher context: most CTV inventory is effectively remnant
A candid assessment: for most India CTV publishers outside the top platforms (JioCinema, Hotstar, Sony LIV, Zee5), the majority of inventory effectively trades as remnant — through SSPs at open exchange CPMs — because direct sales infrastructure is absent. The opportunity for these publishers is not subtle yield optimisation; it is the structural shift from pure programmatic to a mixed direct and programmatic model. Even one or two direct IO relationships with mid-sized brands can transform yield on a publisher's best content inventory.
The path from remnant to premium is not quick, but it is achievable: build audience data, invest in content quality, create a sales narrative, and start direct conversations with agencies who are already spending on CTV in India.