Outstream and In-Read Video Buying for DACH Publishers

Two different products: In-read video on German publisher sites clears roughly 9 to 16 euros net CPM with viewable completion somewhere around 12 to 18 percent. The same money in connected TV clears 22 to 38 with completion above 90. That gap tempts planners into treating outstream as cheap CTV, and it is not: it is a muted format inside a reading session, and it works when you need frequency against people already reading about the category, or reach beyond the household television. Bought as a CTV extension on a blended CPM, it drags the average down on a report and delivers nothing you can point to. Supply we buy and supply we block: Ströer, Ad Alliance, Axel Springer Media Impact and the Goldbach inventory in Austria and Switzerland carry most of the German-language reading audience worth paying for, and their player implementations differ enough that the same creative performs differently across them. We buy through Prebid paths where the publisher runs them and through named private marketplaces otherwise. Sellers.json chains deeper than one hop get cut, because every additional hop is margin leaving your budget and provenance leaving your report. Made-for-advertising sites get excluded on the ANA criteria, ad density, refresh behaviour under thirty seconds, and paid-sourced traffic, and the exclusion holds when the same inventory reappears at three euros through a different path, which it does. Measurement: OM SDK measurement is a condition of the buy, not a preference. We report the MRC video standard, two continuous seconds at fifty percent in view, and separately the stricter fully-in-view completion, because the difference between those two numbers tells you what the player is actually doing. Attention metrics from Adelaide or Lumen go alongside where the budget justifies the licence, mostly to compare publishers rather than to optimise inside one. Sound-on rate gets reported and rarely gets chased: in-read is a muted format, and creative built on a voiceover has already lost. Creative for a muted format: Six and fifteen seconds. The brand asset inside the first two, because the scroll decides at three. Burned-in subtitles rather than a caption track the player may not render. Square or vertical masters where the player is responsive, since a landscape file letterboxed into a mobile in-read slot wastes half the pixels you paid for. Declined: We will not buy inventory whose seller refuses OMID. We will not count a completion on a 320-pixel sidebar player that finished its loop while the reader was four screens further down. We will not run on made-for-advertising sites at any price, and we will not accept them back through a repackaged deal ID. We will not optimise toward completed-view cost, because that objective reliably finds the cheapest possible attention and then buys all of it. Wrong buyer: If the only KPI on the brief is completed views at a target unit cost, another shop will hit it and we will not. If the campaign depends on sound-on storytelling, put the money into connected TV or into online video with a play-button start. And if the brief calls for outstream to make the video plan's average CPM look better, that is the exact use we refuse. Running it: Weekly supply review with domains cut on evidence and the reason recorded. Creative rotation judged on attention and in-view completion rather than click. The blocklist stays yours, with its reasoning, and it is usually the most valuable thing the engagement produces.