← Back to product·Simulmedia Switchboard Docs · v1 draft·Concepts / Agreements
Concepts

Agreements

An agreement is the relationship, made explicit. It is the object that answers: what can this buyer see from this seller, at what rates, on what deal types, and how does money settle. If you know programmatic, the mental model is a deal ID: presenting it is proof of the relationship, and proof unlocks the terms.

{
  "agreement_id": "agr_71c0d2",
  "buyer": "yourco",
  "seller": "acme",
  "catalog_scope": ["open", "private"],
  "rate_card_refs": ["acme-yourco-2026q4"],
  "deal_types": ["preemptible", "fixed", "audience_as_aired", "audience_guaranteed"],
  "settlement_mode": "direct",
  "effective": {
    "start": "2026-10-01",
    "end": "2027-09-30"
  }
}

rate_card_refs names the buyer-scoped cards only you can transact; settlement_mode is direct or cleared, and cleared agreements also carry a credit block. The field-by-field reference lives at the agreement object.

What an agreement unlocks

Presenting an agreement changes what you can see and do on the marketplace, across four dimensions:

  • Visibility: private catalogs and buyer-scoped rate cards appear only when your agreement carries them; open catalogs need no agreement beyond platform access.
  • Pricing: sellers mint rate cards per agreement, the deal-ID-floor pattern: your negotiated rates, invisible to everyone else, validated under the same price-clearance invariant.
  • Deal types and workflow: a seller can allow instant book for trusted buyers and request-and-approve for everyone else.
  • Settlement: direct vs cleared is an agreement property, echoed on every order.

Who enforces what

The platform enforces market rules: identity, catalog integrity, the price invariant, the state machine, the audit trail, settlement mechanics. Participants enforce commercial policy through agreements and their own gates: who may buy, at what rates, with what approvals and credit. Switchboard makes your policy enforceable; it does not write it for you.

Network-scoped PMP deals

A common shape for first private deals: an agreement pinned to a single network's inventory set, with the buyer defining the standing parameters (daypart mix, copy splits, lengths, rate types) that apply to every order drawn under it, the way a deal ID parameterizes a line in a DSP. On Switchboard, that is an agreement whose catalog scope is one network and whose buyer-scoped rate card carries the negotiated terms; orders under it validate against the buyer's declared parameters automatically.

PreviousThe deal model