To be or not to be? That is the question when it comes to supply path optimization (SPO), due to different views on its potential.
Small brands, for example, often avoid SPO, thinking it is too expensive and suitable only for bigger names. Some DSPs or SSPs, while admitting SPO’s value, are still skeptical, too.
They emphasize that SPO encourages advertisers to rely less on third-party technologies, decreasing their ability to evaluate and determine the right impression.
This is true in a way. SPO can solve a lot, but like any tool, everything depends on the way it’s used. And when done right, SPO can benefit both small and big brands in several ways.
What benefits exactly are we talking about?
First and foremost, it’s advertising costs. They will likely fall this year due to trade wars and other factors pressuring the global economy. Trends like these force marketers to deliver strong results with lower budgets. That is when SPO takes the stage.
Its primary goal is to optimize supply chains by focusing on reliable and effective paths to inventories. This means avoiding unnecessary partners – resellers, intermediaries, and other vendors – and cutting the extra fees that come with them.
The result? More efficient targeting, faster performance, and better returns without the budget bloat. But it’s also the following:
Transparency and control
Adalytics’s report shows that brands often serve their ads to bots without realizing it. Even the biggest advertisers like Disney, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and IBM make such mistakes. SPO is one of your tools for minimizing them. Why? Because supply path optimization programmatic solutions help to analyze supply chains.
As a result, advertisers can track platforms and intermediaries through which their ads pass before reaching the final publisher. This helps evaluate involved partners, eliminating noncompliant sources.
Competitive advantage
Eliminating unauthorized inventories also helps you deliver ads faster than your competitors, and thus convert impressions into purchases (or other actions) more quickly.
This also improves time-to-ad delivery, giving your brand a speed edge in highly competitive auctions. And in an ecosystem where milliseconds can influence outcomes, that edge counts.
Fraud prevention
Serving ads to the bots by mistake once or twice is one thing. But what if your supply chain includes unverified sellers, that’s a systemic issue.
Without proper supply validation, your platform may receive countless impressions that look legitimate but never convert into bids – or worse, get through and deliver ads no one sees. That means wasted spend, distorted reporting, no engagement, and no conversions.
SPO can help flag these pathways early by scanning sellers, filtering traffic at the request level, and prioritizing routes that actually drive performance.
Last but not least: decreased carbon footprint
This is an unobvious but very significant benefit of using SPO. According to the Scope3 report, the programmatic industry in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia alone produces around 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per month. This is like consuming 24 million gallons of gasoline! But why is this number so significant?
The reason is that the programmatic industry requires a lot of energy to work. Server usage and each separate operation between partners increase energy consumption. To meet this need, more coal and oil are burned at energy stations and plants, increasing carbon emissions.
How can SPO help here? Simply by reducing the number of partners involved in a brand’s supply chain. Fewer partners mean less data to process and, therefore, less energy to consume.
The ‘expensive SPO’ myth: busted
SPO isn’t a product. It’s a strategy. And how much it costs – or doesn’t – is entirely based on how you apply it. If you want, you can build your own AI-driven infrastructure to analyze your supply chain’s efficiency. And then, yes, you will have to pay more.
But that’s not the only way. In practice, you can implement SPO with simple things like:
- Cooperating with transparent partners who don’t hide the pathways they use or rely on bot traffic to generate higher impressions
- Using bidstream data and sellers.json to identify redundant resellers
- Auditing your current path-to-inventory setup with existing data: That includes reviewing QPS logs and win rates regularly to detect inefficiencies in how demand is routed
We’re not talking major investments here: just curiosity, visibility, and the willingness to make smart choices.
Final words
SPO isn’t just some cost-saving gimmick — it’s a long-term growth plan. It offers more control, more clarity, and better performance without the hidden bloat. Whether you’re running lean or scaling fast, SPO helps you focus your spend on what actually works.
The best part? You don’t need to overhaul your stack or reinvent your buying strategy to get started. Just choose better paths, partner smarter, and stop paying for what doesn’t pay off.
It’s not about spending more — it’s about spending better.
