PMP scale: how big does a deal need to be to spend its budget?
Part of Curated deals and PMPs
The short answer
PMP scale is the number of impressions a deal can actually win once geography, format, targeting and the flight are applied, not the number of sites on its list. A deal has enough scale when its eligible, winnable impressions comfortably exceed what the budget needs. Estimate it from platform forecasts, then test it early in the flight.
Key takeaways
- Site count is a weak guide to scale; what matters is how many requests carrying the deal ID survive the campaign's own settings.
- Estimate scale in stages: listed sites, sites the exchange sells, the target market, the format, targeting and finally what the bid can win.
- A deal is too small when its forecast leaves no room for normal losses, or when it cannot be forecast at all and the flight is short.
- Combining small deals helps operations, but only adds reach when the deals reach different impressions.
- Tell the client the estimate, the assumptions behind it and the check date, not a single promised number.
How many sites does a PMP need to scale?
There is no fixed number, and none of the Google or IAB Tech Lab documents cited on this page sets one. Two sites that sell video across a whole country can supply more impressions than forty small blogs that sell one banner size in one province. The general question of how long a planning list should be is covered in the programmatic media planning guide; for a deal, the useful question is narrower: how many of the impressions this deal touches can this campaign actually buy?
Display & Video 360 measures deals that way. Its Marketplace overview (opens in a new tab) defines a deal's impression opportunities as "The total number of bid requests associated with the specific deal," labeled forecasted availability, and breaks them down by sites and apps, country, format and device. It also warns that "Some fields may not be populated." That breakdown is a better starting point than any site count, because it shows where a deal's volume really sits.
Definition
- Deal scale
- The volume of impressions a deal can deliver to one campaign, after the exchange's selling path, the campaign's geography, formats, targeting and flight dates, and the bid's ability to win are taken into account.
How do you estimate deal scale before launch?
Work from the outside in. Each stage removes impressions for a reason the planner can name, and the reasons are what make the estimate defensible later.
A five step scale estimate
- Read the deal's opportunities by stage. Use the Marketplace breakdown by country, format and device to see how much of the deal's volume fits the brief.
- Forecast with the campaign's real targeting. Display & Video 360's Inventory Availability report (opens in a new tab) finds "the predicted number of impressions that match specific targeting criteria," so run it with the line item's actual settings.
- Model the flight. Google's planning article (opens in a new tab) says a 14 day campaign's forecast draws "from the previous 14 days starting from the current day," so seasonal flights need a judgment on top.
- Compare with the budget. Divide the budget by the planned price to get the impressions needed, then check how many times over the forecast covers it.
- Record the assumptions. Write down the data date, the targeting used and any field the platform could not populate.
What makes a deal too small to deliver?
A deal is too small when its winnable volume leaves no room for the losses an auction produces along the way. Display & Video 360's troubleshooter (opens in a new tab) shows those losses as stages: total available requests, filtered impressions, targeting, creatives, eligible impressions, frequency, budget and pacing limits, bids submitted, and bids filtered by the auction. A forecast that only just matches the budget at the first stage can fall short at the last.
| Sign | What it can mean | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Forecast close to the impressions needed | No margin for targeting, creative and auction losses | Run the forecast with the full line item settings |
| Forecast shows no data | A new deal, or a targeting combination too small to report | Publisher level opportunities and the seller's own estimate |
| Volume sits on two or three sites | Delivery depends on a few publishers' traffic | The sites and apps breakdown in Marketplace |
| Heavy audience or demographic layers | Targeting removes a large share of requests before bidding | The targeting stage of the troubleshooter |
| Short flight in a quiet season | History overstates the volume the flight will see | The dates the forecast drew from |
Two Google statements explain why forecasts go blank. The Inventory Availability report "may not display data for targeting combinations that match fewer than 3,000 unique cookies," and its unique counts exclude "any users who block third-party cookies." A blank forecast therefore does not prove the deal has no supply; it means the platform cannot show it. Google's deal best practices also warn that layered audience and demographic targeting can "end up being too restrictive, preventing deals from working."
Should several small deals be combined?
Combining helps with operations and only sometimes with scale. Display & Video 360's deal management article (opens in a new tab) lets buyers "Organize your inventory into groups so that you can easily manage and target multiple inventory sources at once," which simplifies trafficking and pacing. A group does not create new impressions. If two deals sell the same publishers in the same market, grouping them targets the same requests twice.
| Lever | What it can add | What it can cost |
|---|---|---|
| Add sites to the list | New publishers and new requests | A new list version, review time and a weaker fit if the bar drops |
| Add a format, such as video | Requests the current creative cannot use | New creative, specs and review |
| Widen geography | Requests from nearby markets | Spend outside the brief's core market |
| Loosen targeting layers | Requests the line item was filtering out | Less control over who sees the ad |
| Extend the flight | More days of the same supply | Later results, and a changed plan for the client |
| Group with another deal | Reach only where the deals do not overlap | Harder reporting if the deals are not named and tracked apart |
Before grouping, compare the deals' sites and apps breakdowns. Overlap is the test: deals with different publishers or different formats add reach, deals with the same ones add complexity. The IAB Tech Lab Deals API (opens in a new tab) helps here when a seller supports it, since its pubcount field says whether a deal is single or multi publisher and its dinventory field says whether the sites may change after launch.
How do you explain scale limits to a client?
A forecast can read as a promise unless it is framed otherwise. Google's planning article is direct about why: forecasts "use trends in the ad market, including the historical performance of similar campaigns to model performance," and delivery can fluctuate "when cookies or device ID are unavailable." Present scale as a range with its assumptions, a date and a plan for what happens if the deal under delivers.
What a scale note to the client should state
- The impressions the budget needs at the planned price, and the forecast against it.
- The data date and the targeting the forecast used.
- Any stage where the platform showed no data, and why that is not proof of no supply.
- How much of the volume depends on a few sites.
- The day the trader will check early delivery against the forecast.
- The agreed fallback: which lever is pulled first if the deal falls short, and who approves it.
What does a scale problem look like on a real brief?
Fictional example
A farm equipment dealer group in the Dakotas
A fictional farm equipment dealer group with stores around Fargo, Bismarck and Sioux Falls wants display beside agriculture news, crop and livestock coverage and rural life content in North Dakota and South Dakota, for a four week preseason flight. The planner approves a list of specialist farm publishers and regional news sites, and the seller builds a curated private auction.
The forecast with the line item's settings falls well short of the impressions the budget needs, and the bulk of the volume sits on two regional news sites. The audience layer the client requested removes a large share of what remains.
The trader brings the client three levers in order: drop the audience layer, add online video from the same publishers, and extend the list to national farm publishers with readers in both states. The client approves the first two before launch and keeps the third as the fallback, with an early delivery check set for day four.
How does PlacementGraph help when a deal list is too short?
Frequently asked questions
Does a programmatic guaranteed deal remove scale risk?
It moves the risk. In OpenRTB 2.6 a guaranteed deal is one the bidder must bid on, and the Deals API says a guaranteed deal should state its units and total cost. The volume is agreed before the flight, so the scale question is settled in negotiation rather than discovered in delivery.
Why does a deal's forecast change from week to week?
Display & Video 360 forecasts draw on recent history, so a change in publishers' traffic, the season or the campaign's settings moves the estimate. Google says updating plan settings will impact the forecast. Re-run the forecast after each settings change and record the date with the result.
Can a deal have too much scale?
Yes, in the sense that a very broad deal can spend its budget on a small part of its inventory. When the volume far exceeds the budget, check where delivery lands in the sites breakdown, and use frequency settings and the list itself to keep spend spread across the sites the client approved.
How soon after launch can scale be judged?
Within the first days, once bid requests and wins appear in reporting. Display & Video 360 updates impression and click data every 3 to 4 hours and can revise data for up to 31 days, so treat early totals as a direction and confirm with later reports.
Sources
- Marketplace overview (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Inventory Availability report (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Create a plan for a campaign (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Best practices for setting up deals (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Troubleshoot your deals and line items (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Manage your deals (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Report data freshness and availability (opens in a new tab)Google, Display & Video 360 Help
- Deals API specification, version 1.0 (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, deal-api repository
- OpenRTB 2.6 specification, Deal object (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB repository
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.