Rubicon Project's Heather Carver on the Continuing Evolution of Header Bidding

Rob Beeleramp160 Header bidding was something a lot of people talked about but it took some time to be adoptedamp160 WhyHeather Carveramp160 The early adopters of header bidding were quite successful and quite vocal about the resultsamp160 All levels of publishers from the long tail to premium publishers wanted to participateamp160 The problem was that header bidding at the beginning was complicated to set up and maintainBeeleramp160 It was a hackCarveramp160 Exactlyamp160 It was complicatedamp160 Many publishers identified to us that they didn39t have the dedicated development resources to launch a header bidding solutionamp160 This applied especially to Prebid which is open source header bidding code and didn39t have much documentationBeeleramp160 Knowing this how did Rubicon Project approach header biddingCarveramp160 We agreed with the underlying concept behind header bidding of giving everyone equal access to inventory and to compete on a perimpression basisamp160 It also gives publishers the control they need in order to set up their stack in a way that aligns best for their businessamp160 If for example a publisher wants to prioritize private marketplaces they can use header bidding technology to control preferred access to their inventoryamp160amp160Standard ad serving technologies make this level of flexibility and control more difficultRubicon Project decided to build upon the open source Prebid codeamp160 We realized the Prebid narrative aligned very nicely with the industry initiative for more transparencyamp160 Open source isn39t proprietary and black boxyamp160 The idea of a wrapper is to not advantage one bidder over the otheramp160 If you have a proprietary solution that39s being paid on just that solution39s demand it creates a situation where the incentives don39t align to holistically maximize revenueDemand Manager Rubicon39s suite of Prebid tools and services is our solution to help publishers adopt open source neutral independent technologyamp160 Technologies like UIs and analytics allow publishers to manage their wrapper without the need of development resourcesamp160 They can test different timeouts within their wrappers and add and remove bidders from the wrappers that they set upThere is also a service layer we built on top of Prebidamp160 Part of Demand Manager is to optimize all partners within the wrapperamp160 Instead of just focusing and being incentivized to maximize the Rubicon revenue the idea of Demand Manager is to help publishers look at all of their bidders and figure out how to maximize revenue across their entire header bidding setupBeeleramp160 Where does Prebidorg fit in the rise of header biddingCarveramp160 Prebidorg is an independent neutral organizationamp160 It39s like the IAB but for header biddingamp160 It sets the rules for how header bidding should be runamp160 You get away from these black box solutions and you have something where it39s fully documentedamp160 Publishers can now be on the board of Prebidorg so you have a lot of different people contributing and helping to define the standards for how header bidding should operateamp160 There are over 400 different contributors to the Prebid codeamp160 When one partner innovates code all contributors reap the benefitsamp160 Other ad tech companies and publishers may contribute code effectively speeding up innovationamp160 No one is beholden to one proprietary solution39s development team or resources to innovateAs an industry if we want buyers to feel comfortable investing in digital media the foundation of that is trust and transparencyamp160 Over the last couple of years Prebidorg has helped Prebid mature and make it easier to adoptBeeleramp160 It doesn39t sound like a hack anymoreamp160 How are Prebid and header bidding evolvingCarveramp160 Header bidding has definitely come a long wayamp160 But browsers aren39t meant to process all the code that they are and publishers are highly sensitive to things that slow their pages down and impact user experienceamp160 With that in mind we want to move the code from the clientside the user39s browser to the server which will reduce latency and improve user experienceOne of the crucial pieces of functionality within Rubicon Project39s Demand Manager is the ability for publishers to toggle a bidder back and forth between clientside and serverside and to analyze when and where to make that shift without impacting yieldIdentity is also an important evolutionary stepamp160 We all know there39s not going to be just one universal ID but Prebid is working on an ID envelope where publishers can choose which ID partners they want to work withamp160 It will really help the industry move away from thirdparty cookies and toward the use of these universal IDsamp160 That39s going to be a very very big portion of giving publishers the true ability to 100 move to servertoserver and off of clientside solutionsBeeleramp160 How can Prebid help publishers prepare for the futureCarveramp160 Changes with how browsers handle cookies and legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Act are going to force the industry to more quickly adopt universal ID solutionsamp160 As publishers start testing they can use Demand Manager to get the insights and manage their stack on their own and figure out how these IDs workamp160 They can safely move over to servertoserver from clientside and recognize all the benefits of moving servertoserverThe result will be faster pages better consumer experiencesamp160and better monetizationClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Rubicon Project's Heather Carver on the Continuing Evolution of Header Bidding

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Rubicon Project's Heather Carver on the Continuing Evolution of Header Bidding

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