Prebid Server Aims To Ease Header Bidding For Programmatic Advertisers

Prebid Server is an open-source server-to-server header bidding solution. The prebid server gives publishers access to the largest header bidding marketplace. It’s free to use, transparent, and integrated with more than 150- demand partners and many managed solution partners. Michael Richardson, Senior Director, Product Line Management, AppNexus said,

It is an infrastructure of a streamlined adtech ecosystem that maximizes value for everyone, not just Google.

According to Prebid.org, a prebid server improves your page’s performance by running the header bidding auction on a server. This will improve your page’s load time, which should improve your users’ experience.

In recent years, it has grown alongside the programmatic market and extended support for native, video, apps, and connected TV. Sellers are used to the benefits of the unified auction offered by Prebid by adopting multiple wrappers across multiple formats. Now there are calls for simplicity from buy-side as well as platform-supported, server-side Prebid solutions to reduce the burden on publishers.

Publishers dealing with multiplying wrapper formats

Prebid’s biggest asset ‘open source’ is a limitation for some sellers. The open-source nature of Prebid leads to transparency, which means publishers should take the matter in their own hands or find an expert technology partner.

Publishers lack the expertise to manage Prebid and its open values and eventually, this has led some of them to embrace proprietary wrappers. But proprietary wrappers have their drawbacks – the disparity in counting methodology and payment can result in buyers and sellers struggling to transact. Also, some wrappers exclude certain types of demand from participating – in cases where internal teams haven’t updated or built third-party adapters to integrate proprietary wrappers into the auction.

Many publishers have been running Prebid, Amazon TAM, and Google Open Bidding simultaneously. As a result, DSPs are receiving impressions once from each SSP, multiplied by the wrappers. The growing dissatisfaction in the DSP community over duplication requests and declining to participate in Open Bidding led to initiating mandates that the SSP community and publishers pick a single wrapper format.

In the upcoming period, it will be clear how the industry adapts but many publishers are expected to choose Prebid as a primary wrapper.

Also Read: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying

Prebid server for Mobiles and CTV, Easy-to-use formats

A narrative was out in the early evolution of header bidding that “server-to-server was the future.”  By running of an auction on the server-side than the user’s device- logic is-  server-side heading creates a unified auction in a new environment, reduces latency, and improves user experience.

This approach has three issues – publishers couldn’t run easily as client-side, low participation of bidders, and required an additional user-match layer, reducing revenue. 

Prebid Server is the solution to all these problems. Its 60 bidding partners show demand is no more a concern. Prebid sever will not need an additional user-match layer longer as cookies decommission, Prebid Server’s advantage in user identity only grows. It also allows header bidding in mobile applications and connected TV.

Many leading providers are investing in solutions to combine the Prebid server with their own technology making it easier for sellers to run server-side header bidding across all formats and retaining the benefits of an open-source wrapper.

Future of Prebid Server

It is exciting to witness the years of investment in Prebid paying off and the Prebid.org community growing. Publishers and Adtech partners working on the web inventory have adopted header bidding as an important technology in their monetization stack. 

Looking forward to seeing how TV programmers and distributors leverage Prebid to optimize their business. It will be interesting to see how different wrappers start using the bid data, and apply data and machine algorithms to further optimize for higher revenues.

Publishers looking to contribute to Prebid and learn more about it, join Prebid.org as a member company.