A floor price is the minimum CPM a publisher will accept for an impression in programmatic auctions. Set it too low and buyers clear impressions at rates that undervalue your inventory. Set it too high and fill rate drops, leaving impressions unsold. For India CTV publishers, floor price strategy is one of the highest-leverage yield management decisions you can make — the gap between a naive floor and an optimised floor is often 30–60% in effective CPM.
Why floor prices matter more in CTV than display
In web display, there are thousands of impressions per user session and dozens of buyers competing for each. A low floor still generates competition that pushes clearing prices up. In CTV, there are far fewer ad breaks per viewing session, fewer active buyers bidding on India CTV, and higher audience value per impression. Without a meaningful floor, buyers can and do clear premium CTV inventory at Rs 20–40 CPM — rates that don't reflect the actual value of a 30-second unskippable ad on a premium TV screen.
India CTV floor benchmarks by content type
Starting floor prices for India CTV open auction inventory:
- Live sports (cricket, football): Rs 150–300 CPM. During IPL/World Cup windows, raise to Rs 300–500.
- Premium drama / original content: Rs 100–180 CPM
- Reality / entertainment: Rs 80–120 CPM
- News: Rs 60–100 CPM
- FAST channel / free tier: Rs 40–80 CPM
- Kids content: Rs 80–120 CPM (premium for family household targeting)
These are starting floors for open auction. PMP deal floors should be set 50–100% above open auction floors to reflect the value of exclusivity and any audience targeting applied.
Dynamic floor pricing
Static floors set once and forgotten leave money on the table. Dynamic floor pricing adjusts floors in real time based on signals like time of day, content title, device type, and audience segment. Most major SSPs (Magnite, PubMatic) have dynamic floor tools built into their publisher dashboards.
A practical dynamic floor strategy for India CTV:
- Set primetime floors (7pm–11pm IST) 30–50% above off-peak floors — demand is higher, competition is fiercer
- Raise floors on live event days dynamically (set an IPL floor rule that activates on match dates)
- Set audience-conditional floors: impressions matching your premium segments (registered users, metro city, SEC A) get higher floors than anonymous impressions
The fill rate vs. CPM trade-off
Higher floors mean higher CPM on impressions sold — but lower fill rate. An unsold impression earns zero. The optimisation question is: what floor maximises total revenue (CPM × fill rate), not just CPM?
A simple diagnostic: if your fill rate is above 85%, your floor is probably too low — you could raise it without losing significant total revenue. If fill rate is below 50%, your floor may be too high for the demand available. The target fill rate for India CTV open auction is typically 60–75%, leaving some impressions unsold (indicating the floor is high enough to protect value) without excessive waste.
Run A/B floor tests: set a higher floor on 20% of your inventory for 2 weeks and compare effective CPM × fill rate vs. control. SSPs like PubMatic have built-in floor testing tools.
Coordinating floors across SSPs
If you use both Magnite and PubMatic, set consistent floors across both SSPs. If floors differ significantly, buyers will route bids through the lower-floor SSP to clear inventory cheaper — which undermines your pricing strategy. Coordinate floor updates across your SSPs simultaneously, ideally through your ad server (GAM) where possible.