SCMP to shut the door on Open Marketplace in Asia from 1 Jan 2021 | Digital

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) will join large publishers such as The New York Times in removing all its inventory from the Open Marketplace (OMP) in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines on January 1st 2021. It will instead connect its first-party data and persistent user IDs to programmatic deals (preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed) in order to help drive efficiencies and return on investment for buyers.

According to a statement from the company, the open marketplace (OMP) represents a series of growing concerns for advertisers and publishers, ranging from brand safety to data privacy, compounded by the looming deprecation of user IDs (third-party cookies and the IDFA). These hurdles make it more challenging than ever for publishers to create efficiencies that drive success in their business.

A recent report from UK’s ISBA had highlighted some of the challenges of the programmatic market. The report from industry watch dog ISBA and PwC had claimed over half the money not reaching publishers and barely 12% of impressions accounted for. 

“We continue to believe in programmatic buying and see deals as a better way to ensure brand
safety and increase performance,” says Ian Hocking, VP of Digital at SCMP. “As we expand our presence throughout Asia, SCMP is hiring a team of programmatic experts in Singapore and Hong Kong to help our partners make the switch to programmatic deals.” Once the OMP is shut off in Asia, buyers will no longer be able to access SCMPs inventory and to access SCMPs audience, buyers will need to set up deals. 

SCMP launched its insight and activation platform ‘ SCMP Lighthouse’ in June 2020 and the publisher is able to offer clients, brands and agencies a unified persistent ID to over 80% of its users and more than 2,000 targetable attributes that may be combined into scaled audiences. The Post also launched SCMP Signal, a proprietary brand safety and suitability tool earlier this year. Built directly into the CMS it allows SCMP to ensure brand safety across the site whilst analysing all content for context, sentiment, readability and keywords.