What we mean by a supply path
There is no Beeswax object named supply route. A path is targeting plus lists plus deals plus modifiers plus reports, read back after delivery.
Published 2026-09-09 · Search job: supply path advertising
A supply path in advertising, on this seat, is not a single object you can GET. There is no Beeswax record named supply route. What we mean by a path is the combination of targeting, lists, deals, modifiers, and reports that together decide which auctions we bid on and which rows we can read back. We assemble the path after the fact. We do not traffic a thing called Path.
If you searched for a definition, use that paragraph. If you searched for a cleaner path than the open exchange, start from Open exchange waste, mapped by grain and do not invent a deal result. This child seat has historically had zero deals.
The pieces we actually have
Targeting is eligibility. Placement and site are direct keys. Domain and app_bundle need list objects. inventory_source is an allowlist. ads_txt is an environment key we have not used. The how-to is Placement vs site vs domain.
Lists are seat-level reference objects. They are required for some keys and not for others. The old sentence that every app_site grain needed custom_list was wrong.
Deals are private marketplace objects. Zero on this child seat. The comparison stays a plan.
Modifiers scale a bid or weight budget. Bid modifiers have a 66-key vocabulary that includes placement, site, and inventory_source. Delivery modifiers need fallback_weight. Neither is productized. See the two plans: Bid down a bad placement instead of killing it and Delivery modifiers as budget weights.
Reports are how a path becomes visible. inventory_agg and domain_agg gave us 1,149 placements and 1,535 domains. Label-cased keys. Partial coverage. That is the path we can talk about in public.
QPS filters sit in front of all of this. They decide which auctions enter the bidder. They are not targeting. QPS is not targeting.
Why we refuse the single noun
Calling the pile a route makes it sound like you can switch from Route A to Route B. You can switch a deal, a list, a key, or a modifier. You cannot switch a noun that does not exist. The four capability mistakes this project already made (placement excludes, dayparting, pacing entitlement, and "no readable schema") each started with one confident sentence from one endpoint. We will not add "the supply route" as a fifth.
Use path as a reading, not as an object. When we publish a Lab piece, we name the pieces we changed and the report we read. That is the whole definition.