The programmatic market continues to evolve quickly, and we recognise it is becoming increasingly challenging for media owners to navigate. Budgets are more fragmented, buyers have more paths to supply, and the pressure to demonstrate performance has never been higher.
At the same time, these shifts create meaningful opportunities for media owners who can connect their inventory to differentiated, high-quality demand. Index is investing to help media owners do exactly that.
We’ve long sourced demand on behalf of media owners. Now, we’re formalising and expanding that work through a dedicated programme: Index Managed Demand. The investment is a direct response to what we’ve heard from the media owner community. You want Index to bring more differentiated, incremental demand to your inventory.
Index Managed Demand is built around that priority, with a dedicated team, deeper buyer relationships, and the data partnerships needed to source deals that perform.
The demand that Index brings media owners today
Index-sourced deals have been running through the exchange for more than a decade, bringing spend from agencies, brands, buyers, and campaigns that media owners would not otherwise access. These are deals our sales team identifies, packages, and delivers on behalf of media owners. For participating media owners, this work has accounted for 13% of revenue over the last 12 months.
Media owners working with Index on this demand consistently tell us it is additive to their other demand and sales channels, not a replacement to them.
“As The Weather Company continues to expand its presence across the advertising ecosystem, our priority is ensuring that our premium inventory is easily accessible to the world’s leading brands. The demand that Index offers is genuinely additive to this strategy, providing a direct path for a broader set of buyers to engage with our platform and scale where they already do business.”
Amanda Dean, VP, Programmatic Partners and Strategy
The Weather Company
What Index brings to your business
Index Managed Demand is built on our more than 20 years of expertise, and this programme allows us to invest even further in the people, partnerships, and capabilities required to bring differentiated demand to your inventory, including:
Buyer relationships: We work directly with agencies, brands, and DSPs to identify where budgets should be allocated and to build deals that perform. Those relationships run deep across the market and represent demand that media owners may not have a direct path to. Our team is in front of buyers every day, and that proximity is what allows us to package and source deals against priorities media owners may not otherwise be positioned to capture.
Deal monitoring: Our demand team monitors and troubleshoots Managed Demand deals as they run. When a deal is not working, we act on it. That active management is what keeps demand performing and revenue scaling.
Data partnerships: Through our growing Data Vendor Ecosystem, our demand team applies audience and contextual signals when building Managed Demand deals. The combination of these signals with media owner inventory allows us to build deals around specific buyer priorities, not just broad supply.
Commitment to DSPs: Index remains 100% committed to our DSP partners. Index Managed Demand does not bypass DSPs; all demand continues to flow through a DSP at all times. Our role is to help source and package differentiated deal opportunities that create more value across the existing programmatic ecosystem, with net bids submitted competitively alongside all other demand.
Complete transparency and control: The Index way
We know the industry has had its share of opaque commercial mechanics. Index Managed Demand is built so you can see what’s running, where, and by which brand with full reporting transparency.
While Index has historically sourced demand on behalf of media owners, the formalised Index Managed Demand programme will include a new, transparent Managed Demand fee that will apply only to new Index Managed Deals launched on or after 15 June 2026. It does not apply retroactively and does not change your existing revenue share, private market arrangements, or open market terms.
The Managed Demand fee appears as a clear line item alongside every Managed Demand deal in your reporting. The fee is dynamic and calibrated to keep deals competitive in the auction. Net bids remain net bids, submitted competitively alongside all other demand. The fee is separate from your existing revenue share, which remains unchanged, and applies only to new Managed Demand deals launched on or after 15 June 2026, when this programme officially launches.
Participation is optional. Index Managed Demand is organised in two ways, packages and deals, that you can opt in or out of independently. To opt out, navigate to the Marketplace Partners screen in the Publisher UI and toggle off Index Managed Demand Packages and Index Managed Demand Deals. Opting out means Index Managed Demand will not run against your inventory. You can opt back in at any time.
Where we’re investing
As Index Managed Demand scales, we’re accelerating our investment in the capabilities that create meaningful, differentiated value for media owners: deeper buyer relationships, stronger data partnerships, and more high-quality demand connected directly to your inventory.
The transparent Managed Demand fee is what enables us to invest even further in this priority. We plan to significantly expand our demand sales team, strengthening relationships across agencies, brands, and DSPs, continue scaling the Index Data Vendor Ecosystem, and sourcing more differentiated managed-deal opportunities designed to help grow media owner revenue.
Want to learn more about what Index Managed Demand means for your monetisation strategy? Get in touch with our team.
