Joydeep Dey

Header Bidding The Future of Ad-Tech Industry Header Bidding – What is it? In order to evaluate the impact of Header Bidding on the AdTech industry, we need to first understand what it actually means. Header bidding (also known as pre-bidding) is an advanced programmatic technique where publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges at the same time before making calls to their ad servers. The idea is by letting multiple demand sources bid on the same ad inventory at the same time, publishers increase their yield and make more money. While the idea has been around for a while, adoption is gaining steam nowadays as more AdTech companies create products around it and publishers are looking for more ways to make cash. Scenario before Header Bidding Before programmatic Header Bidding was introduced, ad space was auctioned off and delivered only once the ad placements began to load on a webpage (waterfall system). The main issue with the waterfall system was that the selling price of the impression didn’t necessarily reflect its real value. Unsold inventory was offered to the top-ranked ad exchange (normally determined by size) rather than to the highest bidder. Before Header Bidding, publishers could not optimize yield with competing SSPs. Now header bidding has allowed them to add additional sales partners without commercial risk. Benefits of Header Bidding Interestingly, Header Bidding offers benefits to both publishers and advertisers. Benefits for Publishers: The biggest benefit header bidding offers the publisher is greater yield. The key reasons why publishers should enable header bidding on their sites are: • Publishers can control which sources have the ability to participate in the bidding process. • Publishers can expand and diversify the advertisers interested in buying impressions on their sites. • The increased competition results in higher quality and more relevant ads. • Publishers can make their inventory available to more advertisers, which drive higher CPMs and revenue growth. • Header bidding decreases time needed to sell an impression and render an ad on page, which improves user experience and SEO results. Benefits for Advertisers: Advertisers also benefit from the implementation of header bidding in the following ways: • All advertisers have equal access to the best inventory • With header bidding, programmatic ad buyers now get a real look at all of a publisher’s impressions, not just those that went unsold in the waterfall setup. • Advertisers can access publisher’s entire inventory, including premium inventory that was previously only available through direct deals with publishers. The Future of AdTech Header bidding has been a huge programmatic technological breakthrough in the ad ops space. It has opened up the ad buying process thus helping publishers to have more control, more transparency, and higher revenue from their ad inventory. Since header bidding allows publishers to have a simultaneous auction from all the bidders, publishers can sell inventory on a per-impression basis. Less reliance on a single SSP allows for a smarter allocation of impressions and increased fill rate. Advertisers also benefit from header bidding as they now have more access and visibility of a publisher’s entire ad inventory, allowing them to bid on premium inventory that was previously only available through direct sales. In addition to the opportunity to win bids on premium inventory, header bidding provides advertisers with an increased reach to find their target audience. So, it’s a win-win situation for both publishers and advertisers. Header Bidding has now become the buzzword in the AdTech world and for good reasons! Needless to say, Header Bidding is here to stay, and is undoubtedly the future of AdTech.