Adopt Header Bidding or Risk Progressive Decline in Inventory

The pace of change in the digital advertising industry is phenomenally fast and it has left networks that were slow to adapt in the virtual dead pool. Fortunately, there are some solution providers making it possible to offer the required technological capabilities to not just survive in the now, but thrive in the future.  

ServerBid, for example, recently announced the launch of ServerBid Enterprise, a header-bidding-as-a-service solution that lets exchanges, networks, and DSPs offer a header bidding adapter without having to build it themselves.

Header bidding is becoming more popular (roughly 75% of companies that use programmatic advertising employ header bidding) and many publishers today are only choosing to work with partners who can header bid - and not those that only offer waterfall integrations.

For the unfamiliar, header bidding is essentially an auction that takes place outside of a publishers primary ad server. It's quite different from traditional real-time bidding (RTB) auctions because instead of each ad exchange having their own auction (one at a time) and at a lower priority in the publisher's ad server, header bidding allows all connected ad exchanges to bid at the same time - and at the highest priority in the ad server. The result is that more premium inventory is now available to marketers/advertisers programmatically and the increased competition translates into more revenue for publishers.

Header bidding is still pretty cutting edge technology however so most ad companies have not yet built adapters, effectively losing out on this inventory. The ServerBid Enterprise solution, of course, intends to fix this problem. 

ServerBid Enterprise essentially gives networks, exchanges, and DSPs an outlet for joining the header. Building and supporting a header bidding adapter requires resources, expertise, upkeep costs, and time. With SBE, though, any company can get a white-labeled, cloud-hosted adapter in weeks, without having to worry about the engineering resources for ongoing maintenance.

"Networks that don't join the header soon," says Paolo DiVincenzo, President of ServerBid, "run the risk of progressive declines in inventory. With ServerBid Enterprise, they can offer a header bidding adapter quickly without wasting engineering resources."

Read Website Magazine's March 2017 issue... 
Opportunities in Programmatic Advertising