When Buyers Bypass the Exchange: SSP Strategies for a Kokai and OpenPath World

Introduction

Buyers are voting with their routes. Supply path optimization used to mean choosing among many exchanges. Today, it often means bypassing them. With OpenPath connecting The Trade Desk’s buyers directly to publishers, Kokai promoting AI-driven path decisions, and a broader wave of direct connections across CTV, mobile app, and the open web, the traditional SSP role is under sustained pressure to justify take rate with measurable value to both sides of the market :cite[g8q, dba, a41]. This is not a temporary shock. It is a structural shift driven by advertiser demands for transparency, lower hops, higher quality, privacy-safe addressability, and faster execution. It is also accelerated by channel dynamics where logged-in environments, SSAI workflows, and app stores change how identity and authorization work. For SSPs and supply-side infrastructure partners, the path forward is not to resist bypass. It is to productize the value that makes a path worth taking. This article lays out a pragmatic strategy playbook for SSPs in a Kokai and OpenPath world, with focused guidance for web, app, and CTV. It draws on Red Volcano’s viewpoint as a supply-side intelligence company and my experience helping SSPs, publishers, and intermediaries build durable advantage across changing demand patterns. We will examine what buyer bypass looks like in practice, why it is happening, how it affects the SSP business model, and a set of concrete product, data, and go-to-market moves that defend margin and create new growth.

What Buyer Bypass Looks Like Now

Buyer bypass is not one thing. It is a spectrum of patterns where DSPs and advertisers minimize intermediaries and seek direct or near-direct supply. Common manifestations include:

• OpenPath: The Trade Desk’s direct integration that lets its DSP bid on publisher inventory without an intervening exchange, initially web and now CTV as well :cite[g8q, n1k].
• Kokai path decisions: Kokai positions path transparency and curation as core to outcomes, nudging buyers toward cleaner, shorter, curated routes and premium marketplace constructs :cite[a41, ajm].
• Amazon Publisher Services: APS’s Transparent Ad Marketplace and Connections Marketplace create low-hop pathways for demand, sometimes disintermediating legacy wrappers and exchanges.
• Prebid directness: Publisher-operated server-side header bidding, bidder-specific direct adapters, and schain/pchain controls that expose intermediaries and allow buyers to prefer fewer nodes :cite[ib5].
• CTV direct deals: Private marketplaces, programmatic guaranteed, and SSP-light pipes into SSAI, often with content-level signals and first-party IDs that compress path length.
• Google PAIR: DV360’s PAIR facilitates direct publisher-advertiser first-party data matching through privacy-safe workflows, shifting emphasis from exchange-side identity to publisher and buyer data fabrics :cite[c72, g7b].

In all cases, the buyer’s goal is consistent: reduce cost, risk, latency, and waste while increasing quality, addressability, and control over outcomes.

Why It Is Happening

There are structural forces pushing toward directness and curation.

• Transparency and cost control: Advertisers are sensitive to non-working media and opaque fees. The ANA’s recent studies estimate a material share of open web programmatic spend is wasted or unproductive, with path complexity a contributor :cite[dsw, fj4].
• Privacy and identity: Third-party cookies are fading, platform privacy controls are rising, and logged-in environments matter. First-party data matching solutions like PAIR, UID2, and clean room connectors favor publisher-controlled signals and short paths :cite[c72, g7b].
• Quality and suitability: MFA avoidance, IVT reduction, content suitability, attention and sustainability metrics incentivize buyers to favor curated, auditable supply with clear ownership via ads.txt, app-ads.txt, sellers.json, and schain enforcement :cite[d1e, as1, bfd, ib5].
• Latency and performance: Each hop adds milliseconds and failure modes. In auctions where timeouts kill competition, fewer intermediaries can increase win rate and performance.
• Channel dynamics: CTV and mobile in-app have different control points, where devices, SSAI vendors, and stores shape identity and authorization. These environments often make direct or semi-direct pipes more practical and attractive.

Buyer bypass is therefore a rational response to objectives that are unlikely to reverse. The challenge for SSPs is not to convince buyers to re-add hops. It is to deliver unique advantages that survive in a shorter path.

Impact on the SSP Business Model

Shorter paths compress the space in which an SSP can add value. Direct consequences include:

• Take-rate pressure: When a DSP or advertiser can go direct, any SSP fee must be net-positive to outcomes. Take rates will drift toward the marginal value delivered per impression.
• Demand uniqueness erosion: If the exchange’s differentiator was access to demand endpoints, OpenPath-like models erode that advantage. The value shifts to supply quality, data enrichment, curation, and reliability.
• Auction mechanics scrutiny: Buyers expect clarity on first-price mechanics, floors, bid shading, preferential access, and net vs gross pricing. Opaque controls will be priced down or excluded.
• Data-sharing expectations: Log-level data access, bidstream transparency, and signal preservation become table stakes for inclusion in curated paths.
• Channel bifurcation: Web may retain more multi-SSP competition. CTV and app often consolidate around fewer paths with strong identity and authorization enforcement.

The opportunity is to meet the moment with specific, high-efficacy offerings that earn their place even when buyers have alternatives.

Strategy Pillars: How SSPs Win in a Bypass Era

Below is a pragmatic framework that SSPs can use to defend margin and grow. It aligns to four themes: supply quality, privacy-first data, operational performance, and commercial clarity. We map tactics across web, app, and CTV.

1) Turn Quality Into a Product, Not a Promise

Buyers want reliable, curated, brand-suitable supply with evidence.

• Enforce ads.txt/app-ads.txt and sellers.json rigor: Automate detection of unauthorized resellers, mismatched seller IDs, and spoofing. Provide proactive remediation with publisher tooling and public attestations :cite[d1e, as1, bfd].
• Curated marketplaces with proof: Build curation products with documented inclusion criteria: domain and app-level historical quality, content taxonomies, sustainability scores, attention metrics, and IVT benchmarks. Publish methodologies and quarterly updates.
• Real-time integrity controls: Integrate pre-bid IVT, MFA classifiers, and content suitability. Expose the controls and their observed impact per deal ID. Create deal quality SLAs tied to fee credits when thresholds are missed.
• Creative QA and ad quality: Offer independent creative scanning, landing page checks, and latency budgets on ad delivery to protect publisher UX and buyer performance.

Quality must be auditable. Treat it like an API and a product, not a slide.

2) Build Privacy-Forward Data Advantages

In a world where identity is shifting to publisher and buyer first-party, SSPs win by making privacy-safe signals easy and scalable.

• Seller Defined Audiences (SDA) and Curated Audiences: Support the latest IAB Tech Lab specs, taxonomies, and integrity checks. Provide publisher tools to map first-party segments to SDA labels with consistent semantics :cite[ctt, as7].
• Contextual plus lightweight behavioral: Invest in robust page and content understanding for web and content-level signals for CTV. Blend with publisher-declared interest signals without leaking PII.
• Clean room connectors: Offer adapters for DV360 PAIR-style workflows and neutral clean rooms. Focus on simple implementation for publishers and operational clarity for buyers :cite[c72, g7b].
• Signal preservation and documentation: Document how you transmit user, device, inventory, and privacy signals across channels, including schain integrity and regional consent status. Buyers reward predictable, complete bid requests.

Your role is to scale and normalize publisher signals while keeping publisher sovereignty intact.

3) Make the Path Cheaper, Faster, and Clearer

If buyers bypass paths that add cost and latency, be the path that reduces both.

• Fee transparency: Offer net or dynamic fee programs where the fee flexes by measurable outcome improvements: IVT reduction, viewable reach, attention uplift, supply overlap removal.
• Latency budgets and SLAs: Publish path latency and timeout metrics by channel and geo. Commit to SLAs with meaningful credits to build trust and preference.
• Supply overlap reduction: Provide reports and techniques to eliminate duplicative supply, particularly in CTV where the same avails flow through multiple pipes.
• Operational efficiency: Simplify deal management, creative approvals, and troubleshooting with modern APIs and hands-on support. Show the total cost of operations reduction, not just media cost.

4) Double Down on CTV and App Where Authorization Matters

CTV and in-app environments prioritize authorization, identity, and content context.

• App-ads.txt and SSAI alignment: Help app publishers maintain accurate app-ads.txt at cadence, validate SSAI domains, and align sellers.json identities with the SSAI vendor’s supply chain :cite[as1, bfd].
• Podding and competitive separation controls: Provide buyers with reliable control of ad pod rules, program genre and rating signals, and SSAI quality monitors to reduce delivery risk.
• Content-level signals: Normalize show, episode, genre, network, and distribution mode signals with consistent taxonomies and integrity checks. Avoid over-sharing PII while maximizing relevancy.
• Device graph partnerships: Where permitted, integrate with device graph providers and privacy-respecting identifiers to improve deduplication and frequency control without PII leakage.

5) Operationalize Data Sharing and Measurement

Make it easy for buyers to measure the value you add. That means sharing the right data, in the right shape, at the right latency.

• Log-level data (LLD) as a service: Offer near-real-time and historical LLD feeds or warehouse shares with standard schemas across web, app, and CTV. Include bid, no-bid, timeout, and win-loss signals and pricing metadata. Align with transparency expectations raised by industry research :cite[dsw].
• Attribution and attention adapters: Provide out-of-the-box integrations to common attention vendors and outcome measurement partners. Document the incremental lift observed for curated supply lines.
• Deal Health 360: A customer-facing dashboard that shows fill, match rate, IVT, viewability, attention, latency budgets, floor interactions, and duplicate path detection.

6) Commercial Innovation

If your fee is questioned, price to value with proof.

• Outcome-linked fees: Tie fee reductions or bonuses to agreed performance thresholds: IVT below benchmark, attention index above benchmark, frequency waste removal, bidstream completeness.
• Bring Your Own Demand: Allow publishers or intermediaries to onboard direct advertiser demand into your tooling and moderation while paying platform fees that reflect operational costs.
• Curator partnerships: Partner with DSP curation teams to publish named, benchmarked supply packages that are easy to activate from buyer consoles.

Playbooks by Channel

Web

Web remains the broadest inventory base with the most complex identity transitions.

• Accelerate SDA and contextual depth: Make web a proving ground for SDA at scale, with taxonomy governance and automatic integrity analysis :cite[ctt, as7].
• Ads.txt hygiene at scale: Automate detection of broken, stale, or hijacked ads.txt entries with publisher notifications and remediation playbooks :cite[d1e].
• Prebid excellence: Invest in Prebid integration quality, including schain correctness, s2s optimizations, and module support. Publish your Prebid adapter quality scorecard for buyers :cite[ib5].
• Carbon and attention instrumentation: Differentiate web supply with standardized attention metrics and carbon estimation methodologies that buyers can audit.

Mobile App

App authorization and SDK ecosystems make path control both critical and delicate.

• App-ads.txt governance: Build tools for app publishers to validate and update app-ads.txt across app stores. Flag conflicts with sellers.json entries and provide a guided fix flow :cite[as1, bfd].
• SDK transparency: Track SDK versions and signals to ensure compliant data collection and performant auctions. Provide buyers with inventory segments by SDK trust profile.
• Signal preservation: Ensure device-level privacy signals and consent frameworks are carried faithfully into the bidstream. Document exactly what is preserved by OS version and region.
• Fraud defense: In-app IVT requires strong device and install integrity checks. Publish effectiveness metrics and allow buyers to adjust aggressiveness per deal.

CTV

CTV is the epicenter of high-CPM, low-tolerance buying with strong incentive for directness.

• Content-level transparency: Normalize show and genre metadata, ratings, live vs VOD, and SSAI partner identity. Expose confidence scores to buyers.
• Podding integrity: Guarantee competitive separation, category caps, and frequency budgets within ad pods. Prove it with SSAI logs and LLD access.
• Deal discoverability: Publish curated CTV marketplaces by network, content category, and audience disposition with verifiable reach forecasts.
• Reduce duplicative supply: Provide canonicalization across distributor, network, and app to detect and remove duplicative avails. Offer clean path bundles with take-rate accommodations for exclusivity.

Practical Data and Engineering Patterns

The following snippets illustrate how SSPs can expose the right controls and evidence. They are intentionally simplified and focus on clarity over completeness.

Example 1: OpenRTB with SDA and Supply Chain

Publishers or SSPs can attach Seller Defined Audiences and schain to a bid request. This example uses representative fields per IAB Tech Lab guidance.

{
"id": "abc-123",
"imp": [{
"id": "1",
"banner": { "w": 300, "h": 250 }
}],
"site": {
"domain": "news.example.com",
"cat": ["IAB1-6"],
"page": "https://news.example.com/politics/election-coverage"
},
"source": {
"ext": {
"schain": {
"ver": "1.0",
"complete": 1,
"nodes": [
{
"asi": "publisher.example",
"sid": "pub-987",
"hp": 1
},
{
"asi": "ssp.example",
"sid": "seat-42",
"hp": 0
}
]
}
}
},
"user": {
"ext": {
"data": [
{
"name": "iabtechlab.com/sda",
"segment": [
{ "id": "sda:interest:news_politics" },
{ "id": "sda:intent:donor_likely" }
]
}
]
}
},
"regs": {
"coppa": 0,
"ext": { "gdpr": 1, "us_privacy": "1YNN" }
}
}

Notes: The user.ext.data structure is one accepted way to carry SDA-like signals. The exact structure can vary by implementation. Validate with your DSP partners and follow the latest IAB Tech Lab documentation :cite[ctt, as7].

Example 2: SQL to Measure Effective Take Rate and Path Impact

SSPs should be able to show buyers how a curated path reduces waste or improves outcomes. Below is a sample query pattern to compute effective take rates and performance deltas across paths using warehouse joins of bid, win, and invoice tables.

WITH wins AS (
SELECT
w.impression_id,
w.deal_id,
w.inventory_path,         -- e.g., 'openpath', 'ssp-direct', 'reseller-2hop'
w.currency,
w.cleared_price_gross,    -- paid by buyer DSP
w.media_fees,             -- ivt/brand safety/measurement fees, if any
w.net_to_publisher
FROM fact_wins w
WHERE w.event_date BETWEEN DATE '2025-06-01' AND DATE '2025-06-30'
),
agg AS (
SELECT
inventory_path,
COUNT(*) AS impressions,
SUM(cleared_price_gross) AS buyer_spend,
SUM(media_fees) AS media_fees,
SUM(net_to_publisher) AS pub_revenue,
SAFE_DIVIDE(SUM(cleared_price_gross) - SUM(net_to_publisher), SUM(cleared_price_gross)) AS effective_take_rate
FROM wins
GROUP BY 1
)
SELECT
inventory_path,
impressions,
ROUND(buyer_spend, 2) AS buyer_spend,
ROUND(pub_revenue, 2) AS pub_revenue,
ROUND(media_fees, 2) AS media_fees,
ROUND(effective_take_rate * 100, 2) AS effective_take_rate_pct
FROM agg
ORDER BY buyer_spend DESC;

Extend this with IVT rates, viewability, attention index, and latency to quantify the net effect of a curated path versus a bypass path. The goal is not to hide take rate. It is to prove the total value equation.

Example 3: Prebid Configuration for schain and Server-Side

Prebid is often the source of truth for web header bidding. Make it easy for publishers to configure schain and server-side modules accurately.

pbjs.setConfig({
schain: {
validation: 'strict',
config: {
ver: '1.0',
complete: 1,
nodes: [
{ asi: 'publisher.example', sid: 'pub-987', hp: 1 },
{ asi: 'ssp.example', sid: 'seat-42', hp: 0 }
]
}
},
s2sConfig: {
accountId: 'publisher-account',
bidders: ['sspExample', 'contextualDSP'],
enabled: true,
timeout: 800,
endpoint: 'https://prebid.publisher.example/openrtb2/auction'
},
userSync: { filterSettings: { all: { bidders: '*', filter: 'include' } } },
consentManagement: {
gdpr: { cmpApi: 'iab', timeout: 8000, defaultGdprScope: true },
usp: { cmpApi: 'iab', timeout: 8000 }
}
});

Publishers benefit from a validation tool and a weekly integrity report. SSPs benefit when bidders receive complete, predictable signals :cite[ib5].

Metrics That Matter

SSPs that thrive in a bypass era speak the language of measurable improvement. Track and publish:

• Path-level economics: Effective take rate, net to publisher, buyer cost per outcome, and overlap reduction.
• Integrity benchmarks: IVT rate, MFA presence, brand suitability, content transparency completeness, and attention lift versus baseline.
• Signal completeness: Presence of schain, sellers.json alignment, SDA or curated audience labels, consent signals, and content-level metadata by channel.
• Latency and reliability: Median and P95 bidding response time, timeout rates, and creative render time by format and geo.
• Adoption and retention: Deals active weekly, curated marketplace revenue share, repeat buyer rate, and LLD subscription adoption.

Competitive Landscape and Differentiation

The field is crowded and getting more so.

• DSP-native routes: OpenPath and Kokai functionally compress the supply chain for TTD buyers and highlight transparency and outcomes :cite[g8q, a41]. DV360 promotes PAIR and Google-native integrations that tilt toward clean, direct data matching :cite[c72].
• Large SSPs: Major SSPs invest heavily in curation and CTV-specific capabilities, while emphasizing scale and log-level transparency. Differentiation is often execution speed and partner support.
• Tech wrappers and channels: APS and other wrappers provide lower-fee paths and vendor marketplaces that can route around traditional exchanges in web and CTV.

Where can a focused SSP win?

• Evidence-led quality: Not just claims of clean supply, but repeatable, auditable, and benchmarked curation with deal-level SLAs and LLD proof.
• Privacy-native addressability: Best-in-class SDA operations, PAIR connectors, and clean room integrations that make publisher first-party data easy and safe to activate.
• Operational excellence: Faster implementations, better support, and fewer surprises. Reliability, documentation, and tooling will beat me-too feature lists.
• CTV rigor: Content-level normalization, SSAI integrity, and podding guarantees as a real product line, not a slide.

Commercial and Organizational Implications

These strategies require crisp alignment across product, engineering, and go-to-market.

• Product: Roadmap around quality curation, data privacy tooling, LLD-as-a-service, and CTV podding and content signals. Resist sprawling bets that dilute focus.
• Engineering: Invest in schema governance, privacy-by-design pipelines, high-availability bidding, and near-real-time analytics. Build a test harness for schain, sellers.json, ads.txt integrity checks :cite[ib5, bfd, d1e].
• Sales/CS: Enable storylines that tie fee to outcomes with dashboards and source-of-truth data. Train teams to co-sell with DSP curation groups and measurement partners.
• Partnerships: Curate a small set of credible partnerships for IVT, attention, and clean rooms. Depth beats breadth. Document partner SLAs and integration health.

Risks and Mitigations

Every strategy carries risks. Address them head on.

• Privacy non-compliance: Mishandled signals or weak consent propagation can create regulatory exposure. Mitigation: consent-first design, DPIAs, regional controls, and external audits.
• Data quality drift: SDA labels and content metadata can degrade without governance. Mitigation: taxonomy stewardship, weekly integrity checks, and buyer-facing confidence scores.
• Partner dependency: Over-reliance on a single attention or IVT vendor may limit flexibility. Mitigation: adapter architecture with vendor abstraction and fallback logic.
• Competitive fast-follow: Larger rivals can replicate features. Mitigation: operational excellence, evidence rigor, and speed to market with referenceable wins.
• Margin squeeze: Fee transparency can trigger race-to-the-bottom pricing. Mitigation: outcome-linked pricing and curated products with measurable performance deltas.

How Red Volcano Can Help

Red Volcano specializes in SSP and publisher intelligence across web, app, and CTV. In a bypass era, our role is to give supply-side teams the visibility and diagnostics to build better paths.

• Magma Web: Discover and evaluate publishers with technology stack attribution, quality signals, and contact intelligence that accelerate go-to-market.
• Technology stack tracking: Monitor Prebid, wrappers, SDKs, SSAI vendors, and identity frameworks to inform integration priorities and risk management.
• Ads.txt and sellers.json monitoring: Detect integrity issues and unauthorized resellers at scale, with guided remediation and impact estimation :cite[d1e, bfd].
• Mobile SDK and app discovery: Map app ecosystems, SDK prevalence, and signal integrity to improve authorization and performance.
• CTV data platform: Normalize content-level metadata, SSAI mappings, and distribution channels to power curated CTV marketplaces and clean path packages.

We focus on evidence-first insights so SSPs can build products and partnerships that buyers prefer even when a direct bypass exists.

Scenario Planning: 12–24 Months

Looking ahead, a few scenarios are likely.

• More DSP-native pipes: OpenPath-like constructs will expand, including into CTV and retail media networks. SSPs will need to be the preferred curation and quality layer on top of direct pipes :cite[n1k].
• Standard maturation: SDA rebranding to Curated Audiences and continued refinement of sellers.json, ads.txt, and schain semantics will improve interoperability :cite[ctt, bfd, d1e, ib5].
• Transparency pressure: ANA and others will keep publishing programmatic transparency benchmarks, holding the industry accountable for waste and duplication :cite[dsw, fj4].
• Identity pragmatism: PAIR and clean-room workflows will normalize in logged-in environments. Web will see a mix of contextual, publisher-declared audiences, and light identifiers as cookie alternatives mature :cite[c72, g7b].
• Consolidation: Some SSPs will merge or specialize by channel or region. Survivors will have crisp product-market fit and operational edge.

Conclusion

Bypass is not an indictment of the SSP model. It is a market forcing function that compels SSPs to express their value in ways buyers can verify. In a Kokai and OpenPath world, the winning SSPs will be the ones that:

• Productize integrity with curated marketplaces, SLAs, and continuous evidence.
• Normalize privacy-first data so publisher signals scale without leakage.
• Shorten and clarify the path with transparent fees, faster pipes, and overlap reduction.
• Excel in CTV and app where authorization, identity, and content context define premium supply.
• Operationalize measurement with LLD, attention and suitability adapters, and buyer-trusted reporting.

Buyers will keep choosing the path that delivers the best outcome at the lowest true cost. The SSPs that thrive will make that path obvious, provable, and easy to activate.

References

• The Trade Desk Launches OpenPath, providing advertisers with direct access to premium publisher inventory - https://investors.thetradedesk.com/news-and-events/news/news-details/2022/The-Trade-Desk-Launches-OpenPath-Providing-Advertisers-with-Direct-Access-to-Premium-Publisher-Advertising-Inventory-02-20-2022/default.aspx :cite[g8q]
• Digiday: The Trade Desk takes aim at Google’s Open Bidding with OpenPath launch - https://digiday.com/media/the-trade-desk-takes-aim-at-googles-open-bidding-with-openpath-launch/ :cite[dba]
• The Trade Desk Launches Kokai - https://www.thetradedesk.com/press-room/the-trade-desk-launches-kokai-a-new-media-buying-platform-that-brings-the-full-power-of-ai-to-digital-marketing :cite[a41]
• IAB Tech Lab: Seller Defined Audiences (Curated Audiences) - https://iabtechlab.com/sda/ and Implementation Guide - https://iabtechlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SDA-Implementation-Guide-1.pdf :cite[ctt, as7]
• IAB Tech Lab: ads.txt and app-ads.txt - https://iabtechlab.com/ads-txt/ and https://iabtechlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/app-ads.txt-v1.0-final-.pdf :cite[d1e, as1]
• IAB Tech Lab: sellers.json - https://iabtechlab.com/sellers-json/ :cite[bfd]
• Prebid: schain module - https://docs.prebid.org/dev-docs/modules/schain.html :cite[ib5]
• Google Marketing Platform blog: Engage your first-party audience in DV360 with PAIR - https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/360/engage-your-first-party-audience-in-display-video-360/ :cite[c72]
• IAB Tech Lab: PAIR overview - https://iabtechlab.com/pair/ :cite[g7b]
• ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study - https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-12-ana-programmatic-media-supply-chain-transparency-study and coverage - https://martech.org/ana-study-finds-25-of-programmatic-ad-dollars-are-wasted/ :cite[dsw, fj4]