Minimum Viable Pricing

Minimum viable pricing in CityScreen Context is three things: a price list, a demand partner in it, and a floor price on it. This page does exactly that and then checks the result.

It is for an organization’s owner, admin and manager employees, who are the roles that can save a price list. A viewer can follow the steps as far as reading them.

What you already have

Every face is already priced by something.

An organization is created with a price list named Default, and that price list covers every face no other price list names — including every face a synchronization run has just brought in. The useful question is whether the price list covering a face says what you meant.

You will either edit that default price list or create a second one and point it at a face. Both are shown below.

The screen this walkthrough uses is at /prices, which edits RTB price lists. Automated guaranteed price lists are edited at /policies and programmatic guaranteed price lists at /rtb-prices. Price lists sets all three out.

Before you start

Three things have to be true, and none of them is on the prices screen.

Inventory has synchronized, so there is a face to target. See Connect your CMS.
At least one demand partner is enabled for the organization, so the price list has somebody to list. See Connect a demand partner.
The organization tariff commission is above zero. A price list saved on an organization whose tariff is at zero is a perfectly valid price list that sells nothing — see the step that is on no screen.

A price list, a demand partner, a floor

Setting up minimum viable pricing

Open /prices. The organization’s price lists are listed down one side; selecting one opens it beside them.
Select Default, or create a new price list and give it a name.
Set the price list’s mode to auction.
Add one priority group and put your enabled demand partner in it.
Set the floor price: one amount, for one slot length. Twenty for a ten-second slot is a floor of two per second, and the platform rescales it to whatever length a request actually asks for.
Save the properties.
Open the price list’s targeting, select one face, and save.

Two things about that sequence catch people out, and both are in Price lists in full. Properties and targeting are saved separately, so saving one does not save the other. And a floor below the platform’s minimum is refused with a message naming the minimum; the comparison is per second.

That is the whole of it. A floor price and a demand partner are the two inputs minimum viable pricing needs on top of a price list; everything else on Price lists is refinement.

Did it work?

Three checks, weakest first. The third is the one that matters.

The save was accepted

A price list whose floor breaches the organization’s minimum is refused with a message naming that minimum, so a price list that saved has a floor the platform will actually quote.

The face moved

Reopen the price list’s targeting. The face is listed. Open the price list that covered it before — the default price list, if you created a new one — and the face is no longer listed there. At most one price list names a given face, so targeting it here took it off whatever named it before.

An ad request for that face is answered

Have the content management system send an ad request for that face, or wait for it to do so on its own.

The answer is one of three things, and only the first is a failure of this setup:

An error. Something in the chain is missing. Work down the causes below.
An empty answer. The platform asked your demand partner and it did not bid, or bid below your floor. The pricing is live and working; there was simply no buyer at that price for that slot.
A winner. The answer carries an advertisement identifier and a price. The face is selling.

Confirmed plays reach Statistics (/statistic/shows) after the playout pull, not immediately. Reporting explains the delay and what a row there means.

If the request errors

The causes are enumerated once, in the table at the foot of Auction, and the order there is the order to check them in. Four of them are things this walkthrough could have left undone:

the face is switched off, so nothing on it is for sale — Activation;
no price list covers the face and the organization has no default price list — Price lists;
the price list admits no active demand partner — Connect a demand partner;
the commission resolves to zero or less — the organization tariff.

A clock more than three minutes out on the player produces the same symptom for reasons unrelated to pricing, and is worth eliminating early.

What to change next

Once a face is selling, the floor is the thing to work on.

A table of prices by creative length, in place of one rescaled amount.
A floor derived from the audience estimate on the request, for faces whose audience varies more than their slot length does.
A second price list, so that premium faces carry a different floor from the rest of the estate. A different price for some faces means a different price list.

All three are in Floor prices.