THE MEDIA ENCYCLOPEDIA

Sell-Through Rate

Sell-Through Rate (STR) compares the amount of available or projected inventory versus the amount sold within a specific period.

What is Sell-Through Rate (STR)?

Sell-Through Rate (STR) compares the amount of available or projected inventory versus the amount sold within a specific period.

What is the formula for Sell-Through Rate (STR)?

STR = Sold Inventory (Delivered)/Total Inventory (Forecast)

What is an example of Sell-Through Rate (STR)?

Let’s say a publisher such as USA TODAY forecast 1,000,000 advertising impressions last month. However, at the end of the month, they ended up selling — or monetizing — only 700,000 impressions.

When the publisher reaches the end of the month and divides the impressions sold to advertisers by the total impressions forecast going into the month, their Sell-Through Rate (STR) would be 70%.

In this example, Sell-Through Rate is looking at the aggregate utilization a publisher’s advertising inventory.

However, Sell-Through Rate can be segmented or blended to determine the efficacy of a business in many different contexts.

For large publishers such as USA TODAY, CNN, and The New York Times, direct sales and indirect sales channels are often engineered to maximize revenue or yield. Furthermore, inventory based on content vertical, such as Tech or Sports, medium, such as desktop or mobile, and content type, such as video, create a more robust environment for monetization.

As an example, Direct Sales may have dedicated representatives engaging with larger advertisers and are given the opportunity to sell certain inventory or placements across USATODAY.com. On the other end, indirect sales channels — often programmatic in nature and fulfilled by 3rd Party Ad Networks such ad Google or Amazon — backfill less desirable placements on the website or remnant inventory that was not able to be sold via direct channels.

In the chart below, we show sample data to map the Sell-Through Rate for USATODAY.com. When the discrepancy between forecast and sold is smaller parity in supply and demand for the content is implied. However, when the discrepancy between forecast and sold is large, parity in supply and demand for the content is not aligned, either through a lack of sales or, in the case of the Travel content, an unpredicted uptick in demand.