Videocentric publishers are quickly moving toward a strategy in which multiple ad sources compete for an impression at the time of the ad call, while networks are exposing the amount they’re willing to pay for an individual impression within the ad call itself. There’s a temptation to call this concept RTB or Real Time Bidding, which I won’t, because it’s a loaded, polarizing buzzword. RTB connotes exchange, marketplace and platform, all of which are successful and proven models. They aren’t, however, intrinsically linked to the concept of per-impression competition, which is all we’re talking about here. (To be clear, most successful exchanges, marketplaces and platforms do employ some measure of RTB.)

Those of us who aren’t moving toward this strategy should start doing so, and here’s why:

Per-impression competition empowers the publisher to set a “fair value” of its inventory, and enjoy any upside created by the competitive market. Rather than setting a flat fee, in which case it may be under- or over-pricing its inventory based upon its general value, having multiple sources compete on a per-impression basis allows the publisher to benefit from the CPM premium that buyers likely place on hard-to-find users: a small DMA, a particular day part or a high-value shopping cart abandoner.

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