Preferred deal

A preferred deal is a programmatic deal that gives one buyer a first look at selected inventory at a fixed, agreed price before it goes to auction, with no volume commitment on either side.

Preferred deals sit between open auctions and programmatic guaranteed contracts. The UK CMA groups them with private auctions under private marketplaces. It describes them as one advertiser contracting with one publisher on agreed terms for a "first-look" advantage (CMA, Appendix M, paragraph 48, 1 July 2020). The buyer may bid on each impression or pass. The publisher does not guarantee delivery, and the buyer does not promise to spend.

Priority decides who wins. An SSP told the CMA that programmatic guaranteed bids beat everything, and that preferred deals rank above private and open auction bids (same source). In OpenRTB the deal travels in the pmp.deals array with a deal ID. Setting the deal's at field to 3 means the bidfloor value is the agreed deal price, not a floor for an auction (IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB 2.6, section 3.2.12).

Buyers use preferred deals to lock in premium placements at a known price while keeping the right to skip impressions that do not fit. Publishers use them to sell above open-auction prices without promising volume.

Example: A news publisher agrees a $14 CPM preferred deal with a car brand for homepage video. Each bid request carries "deals": [{"id": "auto-hp-q1", "bidfloor": 14.00, "at": 3}]. The brand's DSP bids $14.00 on the impressions it wants, and the rest fall through to the open auction.

Related terms: deal ID, PMP, programmatic guaranteed, open auction, first-look, floor price.

Authoritative source: IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB 2.6, section 3.2.12 "Object: Deal" (accessed 9 November 2026).

Read the full guide: Programmatic guaranteed vs PMP vs preferred deal vs open auction.