Header bidding has revolutionized programmatic advertising by allowing multiple demand sources to bid on ad inventory simultaneously, rather than sequentially as in traditional waterfall auctions. This competition results in higher CPMs, better ad quality, and greater control for publishers. 

Today, header bidding is an essential strategy for maximizing revenue and improving the user experience. 

In addition, the auction enables publishers to present their ad inventory to several SSPs, ad networks, and exchanges simultaneously before involving the ad server. This creates a more competitive and transparent auction, as demand sources bid in real-time for the same inventory.

But let’s dive headfirst into this bidding auction. All puns intended. 

How Header Bidding Works

Header bidding enables multiple advertisers to bid on a single ad impression simultaneously. This process begins when a user loads a webpage, triggering the header bidding script to send ad requests to various demand sources like Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), Ad Exchanges, and Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs). Each demand source responds with a bid and ad creative in real-time, after which the highest bid is selected and displayed to the user.

The real-time bidding (RTB) process enables advertisers to bid on ad impressions within milliseconds, helping publishers secure the best price for their inventory while allowing advertisers to reach their target audiences effectively.

Behind-the-Scenes Mechanics

Header bidding operates on a system that involves creating HTTP requests, handling bid responses, and leveraging user data for efficient targeting.

HTTP Request Generation and Processing

When a user visits a webpage, the header bidding script sends HTTP requests to demand sources. These requests, typically formatted in JSON or XML, contain parameters such as ad unit size, placement ID, and user data. Demand sources process these requests and return bid responses with a bid amount and ad creative.

Pre-bid and Post-bid Phases

• Pre-bid Phase: The header bidding script sends bid requests to demand sources, collects bids, and runs an auction to determine the highest bid.
• Post-bid Phase: The winning bid is sent to the ad server. Ad Server then updates the winning bid in the analytics and displays the ad on the ad slot using its ad-serving logic.

The Role of User Data

The user data is part of the bidding process, allowing selection of certain audiences based on their characteristics: age, interests, and behavior. Through cookies and pixels, the bid of demand sources can be adjusted according to the relevancy and the revenue. However, acts like GDPR and CCPA permit data and personal information to be handled responsibly and only with permission, data anonymization.

Key Components of Header Bidding

1. Header Bidding Wrappers

Header bidding wrappers are JavaScript libraries that sit on publisher websites and enable them to connect with demand sources like SSPs, DSPs, Ad Networks, etc. They help in orchestrating the entire auction using the below steps.

• Manage the setup
• Bids collection
• Ads creative placement

Popular wrappers like Prebid.js and Amazon TAM are used to standardize and simplify the integration of multiple demand partners.

These wrappers streamline bid requests and ensure that all the demand sources can participate in the auction. By connecting all the demand sources wrappers improve transparency and competition in the auction process.

2. Ad Exchanges and Ad Networks

Nowadays in adtech, it’s hard to differentiate between Ad Exchanges, Ad Networks, DSPs, and SSPs as companies are doing all types of activities. Some differences in the process are still there. Ad Exchanges & Ad Networks aggregate demand and connect to supply.

• They connect various advertisers and DSPs.
• They aggregate the demand and help in facilitating real-time bidding b/w publishers and advertisers.
• The real-time bidding ensures everybody gets the benefits 
  • Advertisers get the best-performing slot for their ads. 
  • Publishers get the best rates for their ad slots.

Ad exchanges and ad networks work hand-in-hand with wrappers to process bids quickly and efficiently.

3. JavaScript Implementation

Header Bidding relies heavily on JavaScript implementation, it executes bid requests and collects responses within the user’s browser. It’s crucial to implement JavaScript to ensure maximum profit.

• Proper optimization of JavaScript ensures more demand sources can participate, maximizing revenue for publishers
• To ensure a seamless auction, enable faster page load time & reduce latency.

Each component of header bidding like wrappers, ad exchanges, and networks interacts through this JavaScript infrastructure, to drive efficient and competitive auctions.

Header Bidding Architectures

Header bidding can be implemented through two primary architectures: client-side and server-side.

Client-Side Header Bidding: In client-side header bidding, the bidding process happens within the user’s browser. It is executed by a JavaScript wrapper. It sends bid requests to demand partners, then collects bids, and auction the ad slot based on bids and predefined configuration using RTB. While this method provides transparency and control, it may cause latency and scalability issues, as multiple requests must be processed by the browser.

Server-Side Header Bidding: Provided the Client Side Header Bidding issues, server-side header bidding was introduced. It uses a server to perform the bidding. The browser sends one request to the server, which then handles bid requests to demand partners and returns the highest bid to the browser. This reduces latency and improves scalability but can reduce transparency and control over the bidding data.

Tools to Check Behind the Scenes of Header Bidding

Developer Tools

• Chrome DevTools: Chrome DevTools is a fundamental yet crucial tool for monitoring and troubleshooting header bidding processes. It allows tracking of bid requests and responses in the Network tab, identification of JavaScript errors in the Console tab, and performance analysis in the Performance tab.
• Requestly: A browser extension that simplifies ad operations troubleshooting. Requestly intercepts and modifies HTTP/HTTPS requests, allowing you to fix malfunctioning ads, simulate geo-targeted campaigns, and test custom ad experiences. It also supports testing Prebid.js configurations in staging environments to catch issues early.
• Charles Proxy: A desktop-based application that works similarly to Requestly. It can monitor and debug HTTP/HTTPS traffic. It includes features like bandwidth throttling, session recording, and request/response inspection.

Analytics and Reporting Tools

• Prebid Analytics Adapter: Built into Prebid.js, this tool sends auction data to analytics platforms and tracks key metrics such as bid responses and win rates. It helps publishers optimize their header bidding strategies in real time.
• Professor Prebid: A specialized tool for Prebid users, providing detailed insights into header bidding performance metrics like win rates and revenue impact.
• Google Ad Manager: Google Ad Manager is widely used by publishers for tracking ad performance, impression data, and auction outcomes, offering a comprehensive view of header bidding activities.

Maximizing Revenue Through Optimized Header Bidding Strategies

Header bidding is crucial when it comes to generating maximum revenue with the help of better ad placements. Knowing how it works, how to make it faster and more efficient, and which tools to use, ad ops professionals can reach its full potential. Staying updated on best practices will be key to maintaining a competitive edge in the evolving ad tech landscape.

The post Behind-The-Scenes of Header Bidding and How It Creates Better Ad Quality for Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

For example, in the digital advertising landscape, programmatic advertising has revolutionized how advertisements are bought and sold, using technology to automate the process and deliver targeted, data-driven campaigns. This has only been further compounded by the emergence of ‘Header Bidding,’ which offers a more streamlined and efficient way for publishers to monetize their inventory and for advertisers to reach their desired audience. 

A recent study showed that header bidding led to a 23% increase in fill rate and a 20% increase in average CPM. With these benefits and more, it’s no wonder why header bidding has become a popular and essential tool for publishers looking to maximize their monetization potential.

What Is Header Bidding and How Does It Work?

Header bidding, or pre-bid or advanced bidding, is a programmatic advertising technology. It is a real-time programmatic auction where multiple demand partners bid on a single impression. 

Header bidding allows publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms), ad networks, and ad exchanges to bid before sending the bid call to the ad server. This results in a more competitive and transparent bidding process, as demand sources compete against each other for the same inventory in real-time.

Behind the Scenes:

Header bidding works by incorporating a JavaScript code snippet into the header of the publisher’s website. So, when a user visits a page, this JS code sends out an ad call to all configured demand partners to bid on the available ad units. While the header auction happens, Google Publisher Tag is paused. Once the bids are received, they are sent to the ad server for the second auction round. Based on the configuration set by the publisher, the ad server filters out the winning bid and serves the creative on the user’s page. 

What’s interesting to note here is that all these auctions happen while the page loads on the user’s browser. And as soon as the page loads, the aim is to display the ads at the required places. 

Benefits of Header Bidding

Before header bidding, publishers and advertisers relied on the ‘Waterfall or Daisy-Chaining’ method to buy and sell media. In waterfall, a series of demand partners sent ad requests, each given a priority based on their past performance and the estimated value of the ad inventory. So, if a demand partner sitting at level 1 cannot fill the ad request, the bidding call will go to the next bidding partner sitting at level 2. The bid request will keep on moving down until it is sold off. 

As the bid request trickles down the hierarchy, it often results in a slow and inefficient process, with many ad impressions going unsold. Also, as the partners are arranged based on their past performances, it might happen that a bidder who is willing to bid more but is sitting at level 2 or 3 might never get a chance to bid. The method lacks transparency and limits the ability of publishers to earn maximum revenue.

Header bidding evolved as a replacement for the waterfall method and brought great relief to the users as it allowed:

1. Increased competition: Header bidding allows multiple demand sources to bid on the same inventory simultaneously, leading to increased competition and higher CPMs for publishers.
2. Improved transparency: It provides greater visibility into the bidding process, allowing publishers to understand the value of their inventory better and make informed decisions. 
3. Faster load times: Header bidding enables publishers to load bids from multiple demand sources in parallel, reducing latency and increasing the number of impressions served. The bidding happens during a fixed timeframe. 
4. Flexibility: It allows publishers to make real-time adjustments to bidding strategies, enabling them to optimize for specific inventory and respond quickly to changes in market conditions.
5. Better targeting: Header bidding provides more advanced targeting capabilities as publishers can share relevant data with the demand sources in real-time. This, in turn, allows advertisers to reach specific audience segments and helps publishers increase revenue by providing more personalized ad experiences to the users.

How to Set up Header Bidding?

Setting up header bidding can be complex, but it’s worth the effort. The first step involves the integration of a header bidding wrapper, a piece of JavaScript code that is placed in the header of a publisher’s website. The wrapper communicates with demand sources, allowing them to bid on inventory in real-time. Once the container is in place, publishers can integrate demand partners, such as ad exchanges, SSPs, and ad networks. They will also need to configure the settings to meet their specific needs.

Owing to the technical complexity of the setup, it’s always advisable to look out for a header bidding provider. A good header bidding provider will handle the setup, bring in good demand sources, and offer complete transparency. 

Wrapping up

The benefits of header bidding are numerous, and for publishers looking to maximize their revenue, it is an essential tool in their arsenal. By partnering with a trusted header bidding provider, publishers can access the latest technology, expert support, and valuable insights to help them achieve their revenue goals. 

With the right partner, the benefits of header bidding are endless, and publishers can rest assured that they are making the most of their ad inventory and reaching their target audience with the most effective and relevant advertising. 

The post How Can Publishers Boost Their Ad Revenue with Header Bidding? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Google’s incorporation of prebid is supposed to make ad ops easier by allowing publishers to manage their header bidding relationships through “yield groups.” This will enable publishers to identify some portion of their inventory for Open Bidders to target, and prebid bidders can now do the same.

Ad servers will no longer need to be filled with line items to heighten header bidding demand. Publishers and programmatic executives over at Bustle, AccuWeather, and Cafe Media are all currently testing out this new feature and seem to be in favor. 

This Google Ad Manager prebid link-up does help to eliminate some discrepancies.

“Currently, prebid rounds all the prices before submitting them to GAM, but in the new setup, GAM is reading the price from prebid before prebid has done any rounding,” said Patrick McCann, SVP of Research at CafeMedia and Chair Prebid.js. “You won’t see the rounding errors. You end up with a better auction outcome when people are bidding closely to each other thanks to the rounding effect in prebid.”

Will This Interrupt Pre Existing Header Bidding Set Ups?

It’s looking like it just might. Yesterday on LinkedIn, we saw ad tech vendors questioning CafeMedia’s CSO, Paul Bannister, after he posted about the “bridge to prebid.” 

“There is an existing setup with the orders and line items which publishers are efficiently running and is a proven model,” said Dikshant Joshi, Director of Publisher Development at AdPushup. “While this seems to be a promising tool introduced by Google, there is no proof the performance would be at par or better or less. Google mentions the setup of yield groups (an additional and different setup). Still, the experts in the industry would want to benchmark the performance of the header bidding yield groups before they make a complete move or stick with what they currently have.” 

Google also mentions an offering of a “NetworkMinimumBidToWin” metric that publishers can access via Data Transfer Files. Nonetheless, this is a paid feature with recurring costs, so you know what that means; many won’t be able to access it if they do not wish to pay. 

If “NetworkMinimumBidToWin” were a tool to help publishers and the ecosystem, we would have seen this as a part of standard metrics accessible through APIs and the query/reporting tool.

What Is the Future of Google Ad Manager and Header Bidding?

I have asked the Universe tons of times to provide me with a crystal ball, but until then, we will have to ride the wave to see how this pans out. When we spoke to Dikshant, he mentioned that ad tech is an ever-evolving space, and with this promising change, it will be interesting to see “the actual value it brings against the current set up.”

Although many publishers will have to change their ways of using GAM’s services, others can see the benefits.

“The timeline is easy to criticize since header bidding has had such widespread publisher adoption for so long, but this still feels like a step forward,” said Emry Downinghall, SVP Programmatic Revenue, and Strategy at Unwind Media. “Google publicly acknowledges that +90% of publishers use header bidding, and they are working to support that. If this provides mediation transparency and simplifies setup in GAM, publishers win.”

The post Will Google Ad Manager’s Link-up With Prebid Reinvent the Wheel? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Before we get into the buyers’ different methodologies, and how the effects play out for the sell side, let’s talk about why DSPs have been looking for new ways to separate the wheat from the chaff: It’s header bidding, and the massive adoption of it in the last couple years. Header bidding has been awesome for many publishers’ revenue. We talk about how great header is at strengthening these relationships between pubs and their preferred demand sources. Unfortunately, when you look at header from the DSP perspective, it’s not so direct and efficient. Imagine a publisher sending out the same bid across 10 to 20 exchanges. There’s a lot of sheer volume (for example, Digiday reported The Trade Desk went from processing around 1 million impressions per second in 2014 to 5.7 million per second in 2017), and a lot of redundancy in queries. DSPs and agencies are feeling strained, and they want some way to cut out unappealing or duplicate queries, and root out queries more likely to win.

DSPs and agencies all have different ways of cleaning up the supply path. Some make decisions algorithmically. Some make decisions through manual analysis. Some toss out excess impressions in what seems like an arbitrary fashion.

If you’d been ignoring SPO, assuming it’s “a buy-side thing,” imagine a DSP throwing away your impressions without your input. If you’re not keen on that, it’s time for you to have a conversation with your SSP—because, with or without direct input from publishers, SSPs are already making SPO decisions in an effort to make things easier for the DSPs they work with. Some SSPs are processing inventory algorithmically, determining which impressions would be relevant to send to which DSPs. Some SSPs are following practices (like, for example, putting publisher inventory into first-price auctions) that might lead certain DSPs to turn them off. In any case, as a publisher, you might have your idea of the optimal supply path, but your demand partners might have a different or even contrary idea.

On the sell side, we talk a lot about how header bidding brings the buyers and sellers closer together. SPO can either make good on that promise, or it can create deeper division.

DSPs and agencies are making SPO decisions based on what they can see on their end. If you, as a publisher, have important intel that would help buyers make decisions in your interest, it’s time to start some conversations with your SSPs and any buy-side companies you have relationships with. For example: Look at where your impressions are going. If you see a lot of them going toward one or more partners that you wouldn’t consider your “preferred” partners, that’s a conversation. Make sure your advertiser clients know which partners you’d like them to favor. And make sure your SSPs are making decisions on your behalf that you can get behind.

AdMonsters Resources:

The Publisher Side of Supply-Path Optimization: A Q&A With Rachel Parkin of CafeMedia

The post What Is Supply-Path Optimization? appeared first on AdMonsters.

But again, you might both be right. Media and tech are complicated that way. Ops puts you in the same room as all these other people whose work is similar to yours, but different. You hear a lot of voices, and you can make decisions about who’s really speaking your language.

I was thinking about this while we were organizing this Ops panel discussion about demand partner evaluation. I had recently written a playbook on the subject, and the playbook was informed in part by a publisher survey we’d launched. One of the takeaways from that survey, and also from conversations I’d heard at AdMonsters Publisher Forums this year and last, was that publishers were getting more assertive, kicking aside (or at least pausing) demand partners who were too much trouble to work with, at too low a reward.

And in the first phone call we had with all the panelists (Jana Meron from Insider Inc., Jim Hischfield from the panel and playbook’s sponsor GeoEdge, Stephanie Layser from News Corp and Ron Duque from WeatherBug), that first takeaway was challenged straightaway. For premium publishers, was it even a new thing to hold demand partners to a very standard? Maybe, then, the marketplace has evolved so that more publishers can make the demands the super-premium pubs have been making all along.

But certainly other things have changed. Here’s some of what I heard from that panel at Ops itself. None of these takeaways alter what was in the playbook, but they certainly add to it:

• Sure, this current crop of redirects can seem more severe and more disruptive than certain malvertising attacks we’ve seen in the past. If it’s true that publishers today are quicker than they once were to put misbehaving demand partners on hold, the severity of these attacks may not be the primary instigator. Header bidding, and the transparency it opened up, has been a major driver in giving publishers a new understanding of their demand partners’ performance. By opening the header and allowing publishers to measure bid analytics, it’s easier to see which of your partners are adding quantifiable incremental value.

• In spite of the panel’s subtitle  positive user experience and overall ad revenue are not necessarily opposed to each other (but we’ve been talking about this for a while). Good user experience can foster a more loyal audience. Poor user experience will drive the audience away. It’s pretty simple.
• Publishers need to push back on their demand partners when they’re served poor-quality ads—not only for their users’ sake, but to aid their broader business strategies. No publisher wants to develop a reputation among vendors and other publishers as “the one that doesn’t care about quality.” You have to keep your house in order, too: The ops team doesn’t want other teams within their company coming after them for messing with the ad stack. And no one wants to get an email about a bad ad over the weekend from a senior-management-level person in their company… not again, that is.

• When publishers have the ability to integrate a bunch of demand partners in the header, that means putting just one partner on pause may not affect their own bottom line very much. The downside is, it’s the same on the vendor’s side. The barrier to entry is lower for integrating with publishers. They can make up the lost business elsewhere if one publisher cuts them off.
• Cutting partners off entirely isn’t necessarily the way to go. If a publisher is unsatisfied with the response they’re getting from a partner, they can think of it as putting the partner in the penalty box. Give them time to respond in full and to fix the problem.
• There is a difference between a publisher and just a vendor. A partner keeps communication open, understands your goals, clearly responds to problems, and gives you access to the data you need to understand the value they’re delivering. Sometimes a partner’s value is less in the demand they deliver, and more in the tools they bring to the table.

The post How Ops 2018 Added Nuance to Demand Partner Evaluation appeared first on AdMonsters.

This is some of what we’ll be digging into in our upcoming AdMonsters webinar, “Future-Proof Your Rate Card.” Dial or link in on Wed., Feb. 28, and join Rachel Friedman (Senior Product Manager with our webinar’s sponsor, FatTail), Doug Wintz ( Founder and Principal of DMW Media Works), Alex Vogt (Executive Director, Yield and Revenue Ops at Condé Nast), and Nicole Allyn (Digital Inventory Analyst at the Boston Globe). Hope this doesn’t sound like a spoiler–it shouldn’t be one–but we’ll be looking not at ditching your rate card, but at making it dynamic and flexible enough for any changes that might come down the line, regardless of whether you’re able to predict them now.

Sign up for the webinar today–it’s free! And until the 28th, chew on these preview questions Rachel Friedman has answered, to help us understand how rate card management is evolving, along with who’s responsible for that rate card management.

Isn’t the rate card a relic of the past? Header integrations have enabled holistic yield management, letting the market decide the rate of all the inventory out there.

Direct sales are not going away. Media sales have evolved to include services including more than just media that can be purchased on the open market. More than ever, pricing controls should be enforced within the business to place a value on every piece of inventory. What that means is that rate cards are not only necessary, but they need to be managed more closely and to be responsive to changes in supply, demand, and market value, to name a few of the many inputs that are incorporated into a rate card.

Are you seeing a shift in which department or division heads up rate card management? Is it a positive shift?

Absolutely! Rate management traditionally lived within the sales organization. Over the last 10 years, what you are seeing is that not only is rate management shifting outside the sales purview to finance or ad operations, but entire revenue management teams are being formed to specifically manage revenue optimization and rate strategies. The skill set combines the operational understanding of how the ad delivery ecosystem works, where premiums can and should be applied to inventory, and a yield/revenue mindset. We’ve seen many ad operations teams evolve in to this position and claim their seat at the leadership table, in terms of being able to influence the bottom line and drive the organizational accountability. The days of ad operations being the unsung heroes with all the responsibility and little influence on strategy are fading in to the past.

Are there newer tools that have proven game-changers when it comes to rate card management?

AdBook+! Jokes aside: In the same way that we’re seeing publishers adopt new vernacular around revenue operations, we’ve been working to shift thinking away from “order management” and toward revenue management–which is where our platform is focused. We’ve partnered with publishers like Condé Nast, who have developed advanced rate strategies, and have extended our “pricing and yield management” tools to further streamline rate management within the AdBook platform by expanding our real-time, dynamic pricing capabilities to account for a wider number of business factors, and adding more robust rate enforcement tools.

What’s the biggest challenge publishers have in maintaining a rate card today—optimizing pricing, building awareness, or executing against?

You can create a culture around rate optimization and get organizational buy-in, but if you can’t execute on your rate strategy, then what is the point in having one? The process needs to be easy to use and not create bottlenecks within the sales cycle (that’s where you start to lose buy in).  It also needs to deliver the right data so that revenue operations has the actionable insights it needs to continuously evolve and advance their rate strategies.

The post Webinar Preview: Future-Proof Your Rate Card appeared first on AdMonsters.

Understandable response. This is digital media: Wherever there’s just the perception of a problem, you’ll find someone trying to sell you something to fix the problem. But people in the know will tell you data leakage is real. And if you need someone to spell out how it works, Digiday’s article from last week “Confessions of a Programmatic Ad Buyer” does that. The agency buyer in question explained: Instead of going directly to publishers for audience data, they’ll buy some of the publisher’s impressions on the open market, then buy some third-party data and layer it in to build their own audience segments. They’re getting the data they want for cheap, without paying the publisher anything extra for it.

Sounds frighteningly easy, but there are some downsides to that method. There’s plenty of third-party data available from vendors, but not all of those sources are of the same quality. If you’re able to buy this stuff for cheap, there’s probably a reason for it. So the agency is left with piles of third-party data, plus some data they’ve pinched from publishers—but the publisher isn’t in the room to help advise or vouch for the insights in that data. The agency is building out these lookalike models, testing them, and running campaigns when the tests perform well.

It’s obviously possible to operate that way, but it doesn’t sound very efficient. The buyer in Digiday’s column understands that. They admitted third-party data is error-prone, and that they would willingly pay publishers for data instead. There’s a better way for buy-side folks to get pub data—but pubs aren’t taking the right precautions to push buyers down the right path. Pubs aren’t hiring specialists to manage their data, they’re relying on vendors for security point solutions, and they’re not creating the infrastructure where they can conduct secure data deals.

Let’s Get Legit

All of those points about the “right way” to do things—it’s interesting to hear an agency buyer say it, because Scott Messer from Leaf Group said exactly the same thing at the Miami PubForum last year. Scott’s session focused on how if publishers are afraid of marketers stealing their data, they can and should get in front of the ball, provide the framework for legit data deals to happen, and act as a real partner.

As a publisher, you know your audience better than anyone else. You can save marketers and agencies a lot of guesswork by being involved in a conversation about what’s in your data—and you can put a suitable price tag on that partnership. Buy-siders can build lookalike models—but what’s better, having a user that seems to be the target user, or having a user you know is the target? As Scott had said in his session: Accuracy matters, and if you have a login to tie these data points to, you’ll have a much easier time being accurate.

Putting yourself forward and offering an above-ground option is one way of cutting off data thieves at the pass. The other is to clamp down on security. Ad tech companies are awash in audience data as a result of header bidding. If you don’t want interlopers pinching your data, you need to have conversations with your tech partners about what they’re doing to prevent data leakage at the point of an inventory transaction, or anytime.

It’s easy to take a fatalistic attitude toward data leakage, but the problem itself isn’t really a force of nature. If marketers and agencies are cutting around publishers to lift their data, that means they want the data. Pubs have to ramp up security efforts to make it harder to cut them out—and then they should take control of the discussion. Second-party data is a hot market right now. Data can be a veritable additional revenue stream for pubs, if they can make sure they’re the number-one source for that data.

The post Cut Data Thieves Off at the Pass appeared first on AdMonsters.

One interesting thing about this year is that it’s drilled home that if you’re in ops, you’re only partially in ad tech, per se, and ultimately you’re in the media business, full stop. And there’s much more to the media business than maximizing your revenue on the ad exchanges. Over the course of 2017, we’ve had good reason to think about user experience, regulatory issues, workflow, communication, and issues around strategy that can feel more philosophical or psychological than strictly technical. A number of people at AdMonsters events in recent years have talked about how ops is being elevated within publisher business orgs. Well, this is part of what happens when ops gets elevated. You start to deal with more and more big-picture issues.

As we do every year, we’ve taken some time in late December to put together an AdMonsters highlight reel, from the site and beyond. For all of you out there, this is a chance to recognize how much ground we’ve covered, and also how far these important conversations have come since the beginning of 2017.

A Few Good Units: Mobile Challenges Going Into 2017

We started out the year thinking about big changes underway in mobile monetization. Looking at how the year has played out in mobile, it’s kind of eerie how much this article foreshadowed. Google was gearing up for an assault on intrusive ad units, publishers were getting familiar with IAB LEAN. Apprehension was creeping in, as it became clearer that getting on board with platform publishing was no clear line to mobile revenue. Would native prove to be publishers’ ticket for realizing mobile’s revenue potential? At the end of 2017, it sounds like the answer to that last question is “yes.” And by revisiting this state-of-mobile-monetization assessment from January, it’s evident that whatever insights we’ve harvested this year, the seeds were planted early on.

The Legal Connection: How Ops Avoids Regulatory Pitfalls

The intricacies of the law are not necessarily “wheelhouse” material for ad ops. And yet, ops’ strategic position—facing users, working with tech vendors, and interacting with a variety of stakeholders within a publisher’s business org—puts them at the front lines of a bunch of issues that have real legal implications. This article provides a road map for how ops can identify possible legal issues, escalate them to the right person or team within their company, and set up processes to reduce and mitigate the mess-ups that land publishers on the wrong side of digital laws and regulations.

What’s Ahead for the Header

At AdMonsters, hardly a week went by in 2016 without some kind of mention of header bidding. The practice truly went mainstream that year. By the spring of 2017, that brought a new set of questions: How can publishers keep this revenue growth moving upwards? How will the technology advance from here? How do we solve for latency and provide the best user experience possible? What will it take for S2S to take off, and do publishers need it to take off? What does it mean that Google is jumping into the S2S game with EBDA? How will header bidding affect the bottom line of agencies and vendors? We’re still wrestling with some of these questions, and we’ve spent 2017 reckoning with the positives and negatives of a world where header bidding is standard practice.

The Unwalled Garden: LiveIntent on Scaling the Identity-Based Marketplace

In this March interview with LiveIntent COO Dave Helmreich, I mentioned how it was already sort of cliché to pejoratively throw around the term “the Duopoly.” Of course publishers knew Facebook and Google together own an outsized share of the digital ad marketplace, and they weren’t necessarily comfortable with that arrangement. So what action might they take to retain market share, scale on their own terms, and hold onto the data they need? This interview dives into all of those questions, and lays out how publishers can benefit from developments in identity marketing. Another interesting bit: Helmreich shares some thoughts on the promise of the partnership we now know of as the Open ID consortium, which has remained a topic to watch all year and recently added 15 new member companies.

Ad Ops Decoder: What Is Ads.txt?

This has been a big year for initiatives aimed at reducing ad fraud, and ads.txt in particular has captured publishers’ interests for its apparent simplicity and practicality. The discussion around ads.txt hasn’t had a clear epochal moment to speak of—it’s more like a gradual climb, from education to implementation to buy-side incentivization, then more education and implementation—so it’s not easy to pick one AdMonsters article where the whole storyline came together. So, let’s just highlight the Decoder piece where we talked about how ads.txt works, what it aims to solve, and how it might accomplish what it’s set out to accomplish.

Invasion of the First-Price Auctions

Second-price auctions have long been the modus operandi of the programmatic market. But we started to see some challenges to that model this year, as several of the leading SSPs started experimenting with first-price auctions, and industry leaders made predictions that programmatic’s future lay in the first-price model. This article recognizes that discussion, then backs up and explains why we’re so reliant on second-price auctions in the first place—then asks questions about how exchanges might get around the challenges presented by a first-price model. This is part of a continuing discussion—the transparency of first-price auctions sounds great on paper, but as the programmatic market stands, buyers and sellers would have to put a lot of trust in the exchanges for the first-price method to take off.

Online and Offline Aligned: Conde Nast’s Print/Event/Digital Convergence

Let’s talk workflow for a minute. AdMonsters may be (mostly) focused on digital media, but many media companies don’t have the luxury of being so specific. In working across departments to grow overall revenue, publishers often face challenges in bringing together offline and online revenue sources. Conde Nast had a really compelling case study along those lines: They wanted to bring together information about digital, print and event revenue streams—then look for points where they could grow, and understand how to work with advertisers to make that growth happen. It’s a complicated proposition, but Lauren Farber, Conde’s Senior Director of Business Operations, and Al Villa, FatTail’s VP, Account Management, told us about what they had done together to make the process as clean and efficient as possible.

Ops Keynote: The Coming Consolidation of Ad Tech, Mar Tech and Commerce: Mastercard’s Jay Sears on Our Bright Future

That title is a mouthful, but Jay Sears, Mastercard’s SVP, Media Solutions, had a lot of ground to cover at his Ops keynote in June. AdMonsters touched upon the “convergence of ad tech and mar tech” as a sort of refrain throughout 2017, and Sears’ talk summarized some of the high points succinctly. In short, he told the room at Ops: If you’re in this business to be acquired, you’re doing it wrong. There’s more action at the end points of the industry—the publisher and brand sides—than there is among the intermediaries. Publishers and brands are making more data-driven decisions, and the ad tech/mar tech convergence is enabling the faster growth they need. Sears reminds us we need to ease back on the ad tech jargon and speak in the same language as consumers and business partners—in part, because we have many of the solutions they need, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to let them know how to find and use those solutions.
https://vimeo.com/237155711

The New Dichotomy

For ages, digital media types talked about the dichotomy of premium versus “remnant” (or whatever prettier name you want to put on it) inventory. But quietly, as the possibilities within programmatic have exploded, the conversation has shifted to a new dichotomy: custom branded media on one side, and “traditional” media on the other. Here, Gavin Dunaway wraps up a summary of how ad creative has evolved in programmatic, and how that’s blurred the lines between premium and remnant as we once knew it. And he looks into the new challenges and advantages of the current landscape, and the current state of branded/sponsored content and native advertising (let’s just call all of that “custom content”). Also, what’s programmatic guaranteed have to do with this? That comes into play, too…

The State of GDPR: Publishers’ Questions Answered

Throughout much of 2017, publishers have been wondering out loud how much they should be worried about the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation. How should they be preparing for its May 2018 implementation, if they’re not based in the E.U.? If they don’t comply, will its stiff penalties be enforced? It’s been a troubling issue for publishers, especially here in North America, where E.U. privacy regulations can seem anywhere from esoteric to extreme. But toward the end of the year, the answers publishers sought became clearer. After asking questions for months, we rounded up all the answers we had about GDPR—and finally, the path toward compliance appeared to be pretty well lit.

The post Best Of AdMonsters 2017 appeared first on AdMonsters.

Amid all of those queries, they want to find the bids that are most likely to win their auctions. They’re using a variety of strategies, either algorithmic or manual, to locate those bids. The sell-side problem is, those strategies might not be what any given publisher wants. The buyers might be optimizing by giving preference to SSPs that aren’t actually the publisher’s preferred partners. And maybe there’s a good reason for that–maybe the publisher’s preferred SSP is following practices that are inconvenient or opaque from a DSP’s perspective.

So, it’s incumbent upon publishers to get in and make sure DSPs and SSPs are on the right, uh, path. Last month at our Publisher Forum in Nashville, Rachel Parkin, CafeMedia’s SVP, Strategy and Sales, led a lively and comprehensive session about how publishers can (and should) get involved in supply path optimization. If you’re a publisher, you’re going to want takeaways you can act on ASAP, so that’s what we’re sharing with you in this first installment of our Slides of Our Lives series.

Here’s Rachel’s slide addressing action items: You need to get on the phone or email, start conversations with all of your demand partners, your advertiser clients, and anyone else along the supply chain you can. Learn how they’re doing SPO, and let them know how those SPO strategies are beneficial or detrimental to you. Do housecleaning among your own partners–if any don’t comply with your business needs, it’s okay to cut them off. And look closely at how your selling strategies are contributing to the query overload buyers are experiencing. Take steps to simplify it.

Now keep this slide as a reminder of what you need to do.

The post Slides of Our Lives: Take Action on Supply Path Optimization appeared first on AdMonsters.

Over on Reddit, publishers are reporting they’re receiving loads of emails from senders identifying themselves as reps from some kind of agency or another, demanding their company be added to the publisher’s Ads.txt file or else they’ll stop buying that publisher’s inventory. By the sound of this Reddit thread, a lot of the time these messages are coming from companies the publisher’s ops team has never heard of. AdExchanger reported on this story as well. Fortunately, AdExchanger’s read is that not many pubs are biting at these messages. It sounds like some wishful thinking for these small-potatoes agencies and marketing companies—they’re asking to be added to the publisher’s Ads.txt even when they aren’t buying the publisher’s inventory yet, but might want to in the future. The twist is that there’s nothing in the Ads.txt initiative that prevents many of those agencies from buying inventory from many of these publishers. Ads.txt is just intended to prevent unauthorized reselling of the pub’s inventory. Publishers hold the high ground in this battle, for once. Good thing they’re choosing to talk to each other before ceding it.

… And More Publishers Are Getting On Board With Ads.txt

Ben Kneen of Ad Ops Insider updated his figures on Ads.txt adoption. In the first 100 days of Ads.txt, 13% of the 10,000 most popular ad-selling websites had implemented it. He posted that figure in mid-September. Since then, the number shot up to 44% of those same 10,000 sites. Kneen suggests this might be “a record for publisher embrace of any IAB standard.” He chalked up the uptick to the Sept. 21 announcement that Google DBM would stop buying from unauthorized supply paths by the end of October, endorsing the Ads.txt initiative. Digiday pointed out how Google’s been assertive with Ads.txt adoption: They’ve added a tab in DFP showing publishers which ad sellers have listed their domains, and they’ve helped publishers set up their own Ads.txt files.

No More Buy-Side Fees for Rubicon, Following Auction Experiments

Rubicon Project did away with buy-side fees earlier this week. AdExchanger reports the company has been reducing its take rates since 2016, and eliminating buy-side fees will continue to push down those rates. According to Rubicon CEO Michael Barrett, they need to get those rates down to 10-15% in order to be competitive. Sounds like they’ve been looking for ways to do that as painlessly as possible: While experimenting with its auction models last month, Rubicon found modified first-price auctions with no buyer fees brought about more revenue for publishers and increased win rates for buyers. And reportedly that worked out better for everyone involved than other auction models it had played with.

Rubicon will continue charging publisher fees, and platform access fees to buyers who are too small-stakes for Rubicon to profit from their spending. Barrett said publisher fees were more stable overall than buyer fees: “Boy, did we live a dynamic roller coaster with [buy-side fees] this year,” he commented. Meanwhile, overall spending coming through the Rubicon platform has been in decline versus last year.

Does Header Cause Lack of Transparency, or Expose It?

My colleague Gavin Dunaway went to Ad:Tech NY this week, where a casual comment from Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management at Google, sent him riffing. Spencer said header tags have caused transparency issues in the industry. Might as well roll up Gavin’s response on Twitter into one package: “Header tags have caused transparency issues? Uh, they were there before. A lot of transparency issues can be attributed to the closed nature of DFP. The header leveled the playing field, allowing pubs to get all their inventory accurately valued. Domain spoofing and arbitrage existed long before rise of the header; header may have exposed their profligacy. But the other issue is blind cookie chasing at the lowest price possible. People keep saying that if it sounds too good to be true. It probably is… but that message has yet to resonate with buyers (particularly when they have spend they need to ditch).”

Safari Cookie-Blocking Fallout Hits Exchanges

A couple weeks back, we mentioned the toll Apple’s new-ish cookie policy for Safari was taking on programmatic-heavy publishers. Now AdExchanger is reporting its effect on the exchanges: Their headline on that subject read, “Apple’s Safari Tracking Changes Costs Criteo $1M In Q3, And Could Cost A Minimum Of $20M In Q4.” That says plenty, as is. For the sake of context, Criteo was projecting $260-$263 million in revenue for Q4 2017. But the company is not taking this lying down: They’ve developed a work-around that hinges on a cookie-less identifier that works across different sites and servers. That method is still compliant with Apple’s cookie policy.

The post Weekly News Roundup: Ads.txt Catches On (To Some Agencies’ Chagrin), Transparency in the Header, More appeared first on AdMonsters.