The story. Adding monetisation partners does not automatically add CTV revenue, argues Anastasia Skliarenko, Director of Growth at Axis. More SSPs and DSPs can create duplicate routes, latency and cost. (VideoWeek, 22 October 2026)
01What happened
- The warning. As CTV matures, publishers have more programmatic partners to work with. Skliarenko says the assumption that more partners means more value risks convoluted, costly supply paths.
- What dashboards hide. Volume, pricing, fill and win rates do not show the path itself, such as duplicate routes or needless intermediary layers.
- The worked example. A CTV source shows strong volume at a competitive price. The same household-level inventory reaches the buyer by three routes: one direct integration and two reseller paths, one of which adds an intermediary.
- The cost of that. Bid requests are counted more than once, latency rises, and the buyer ends up competing against itself for the same impression.
- The fix. Keep the most direct route and remove the rest. Reported volume may fall, but she says actual reach can stay the same, and the bid stream becomes cleaner and easier to watch.
- On curation. “Simply taking a large number of sources and packaging them together does not create meaningful curation.” She calls that packaging, not curation.
- For publishers. Review integrations regularly, work out which demand partners add value, and give more attention to a small number of strong relationships.
- For buyers. Use curated paths with deliberate source choices, and ask why an inventory source exists: to serve users, or mainly to monetise ads.
The article gives no statistics. It is an argument from the author’s experience, and the example is illustrative.
02What it means inside a GAM network
In Ad Manager this shows up as the same CTV impression offered through several yield partners, each with its own seat, its own deal ID and its own reseller trail. The partner reports each look healthy. The overlap appears only when you set them side by side.
The useful measure is not how many partners bid but how many routes a single impression can take. Each extra route is another place for latency, a second reseller fee, and a buyer who sees your inventory twice and bids against themselves.
We covered the display version of this when the New York Times made each SSP earn its place. CTV raises the stakes: the impressions are scarcer, the buyers are larger and the household-level inventory is easier to duplicate across routes.
A fair counterpoint: more partners can add real demand, and cutting one can lose a buyer who only buys there. That is why the test is per partner, not a blanket rule.
03What publishers should do about it
04The bottom line
In CTV, a long partner list is not a strategy. Know which route each impression takes, keep the direct one, and let the rest justify themselves.