The Header Bidding Trends That Will Impact Publishers Most
For publishers, Header Bidding is a cost effective and advantageous opportunity to maximize their revenue. Buyers and sellers can expect to see more developments.
Since last year Header Bidding has been a hot topic of conversation among digital marketers and publishers worldwide.
For publishers, Header Bidding is a cost effective and advantageous opportunity for publishers to maximize their revenue simply by making the programmatic buying process more efficient. If you’re not sure how Header Bidding works, read our article which explains how it works.
Or watch this video:
But the question we’re asking today is what the biggest trends in header bidding will be next? Expect to see these trends in Header Bidding unfold this year:
1. Video Header Bidding
Considering the explosive demand for video content among audiences, it’s no wonder publishers would look for ways to streamline and scale up their video revenue stream. Video Header Bidding is a natural next step for publishers looking to capitalize on video and maximize yield.
Many argue that video advertising still requires a great deal of cleaning up and organisation due to the fragmented nature of the new frontier. Video Header Bidding may be a part of this solution. Video Header Bidding no doubt increases competition, but it functions differently from regular display.
Technically, there is no “header” code in a video player. Video players functions as a mediating technology between the website and demand side platforms. But there is significant potential for Video Header Bidding to help add efficiency and transparency into the confusing video landscape, while putting more control back into the hands of publishers as far as partner selection goes.
However, not everyone agrees that Video Header Bidding will work and even argue that the solution can lead to data leakage. More on the other side of the argument, here.
2. Header Bidding Partner Optimization
As we know by now, many vendors are jumping on the Header Bidding band wagon. And while more competition often means more options are made available to publishers, it also means that the landscape becomes more fragmented. its important for publishers to understand and choose the right partners.
That means asking the right questions. Are the partners providing more or less value to your stack? Will your partner be willing to take on the challenge of integration, and if there are technical on-boarding issues is there a client services team who can service you on demand? Optimizing header bidding partners and separating the winners from the losers will no doubt be on the agenda for publishers the world over and publishers will need to do their due diligence.
3. Server to Server Integration
Header Bidding is going to evolve, this is a given with any technology. The next natural development for Header Bidding is going to be in the form of server-to-server connections. Digiday gives a really great definition of what server-to-server connections are here.
In a nutshell, server-to-server allows for the bidding process to happen on partner ad servers rather than on the publisher’s browser. The result? Publishers can pass along the heavy lifting to a third party. There are benefits like reducing latency and page load times, increase efficiency and allow for more partners to plug in.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
What's Next for Header Bidding?
Header Bidding continues to make waves among publishers well into 2016. But its future, looks even brighter.
‘Header Bidding’ was a big buzz word in 2015 and still is even now late in 2016.
Before header bidding was introduced, publishers who were employing the ‘waterfall’ or ‘daisy chain’ bidding method suffered from a loss of impressions when passing impressions back and forth between partners and ad servers.
Since the solution entered the digital advertising ecosystem, header bidding has continued to make waves among publishers. Many large publishers, including Fortune.com and other Time Inc. sites, have adopted it. It doesn’t look like interest in header bidding is slowing down anytime soon and as we move towards 2017, the forecast looks bright and filled with innovation.
But before we discuss what the future has in store, let’s take a step back to re-examine header bidding’s origins.
How does Header Bidding work?
Header bidding relies on a piece of code that is scripted to a publisher website which enables their inventory to be shown to multiple demand sources – including exchanges, ad servers, and DSPs – simultaneously. A real-time auction then takes place on the impression across all demand, and the winning bid is relayed to the ad server to run the ad. All of this takes place in the milliseconds before the page load and before the ad server is able to work through the traditional waterfall.
For a really great explanation, check out this video on header bidding via ExchangeWire.
The benefits of header bidding.
Not only does header bidding help increase the density of demand for publishers, but it also enables the actual highest bid to win. In the traditional waterfall, the daisy chain process could result in some demand partner’s bids never being assessed, despite bidding higher than the winning bid.
Before header bidding, buyer access to inventory was limited by the preferences set within the ad server. The ‘waterfall’ was also originally quite labor intensive, requiring too much human intervention and inefficiencies. For publishers, especially those who don’t have the resources to man the waterfall, this resulted in a significant amount of missed opportunities.
This changed with the advent of header bidding. Beyond allowing publisher partners equal opportunity to purchase impressions, header bidding has an equalizing effect on the auction floor. This drives up demand and yield due to the nature of how many competitive bids are eligible to win the impression.
“It’s no secret that the more competition you enter into the programmatic space, the higher the impression will sell for. Header bidding just helps solve this efficiently.”
Megan Sun / Director, Publisher Relations
ClearPier
Commenting on the impressive changes that header bidding has brought to the fore Megan Sun, Publisher Relations Director at ClearPier, said “the biggest gain that publishers have seen after setting up header bidding is that there is little to no management required for your yield to increase and stabilize itself.” She also added, “It’s no secret that the more competition you enter into the programmatic space, the higher the impression will sell for. Header bidding just helps solve this efficiently.”
Jack Chung, ClearPier’s VP of Engineering, also emphasized the programmatic efficiencies that header bidding allows on the advertiser side. Chung stated that header bidding ultimately improves the “quality of Programmatic and Performance campaigns by allowing them to compete with reserved buys at the same level.” In other words, programmatic will no longer be stuck with the ‘leftover’ so-called lower quality inventory seen at the end of the waterfall.
Early challenges and drawbacks.
As with any technological innovation, there are complications. Early on, many publishers have stated that integration has been among the biggest challenge for them since the concept was first introduced. For publishers without the resources available to help with the setup, integration is definitely the biggest drawback. After all, code is required to be embedded on the website, but the publisher’s ad server needs a corresponding line item mapping as well – this requires some technical know-how.
Other complaints that have arisen have to do with latency. With more information being passed through the header bidder to partners and more partners ‘looking’ at the impression, the effects all this has on page loading times is definitely an issue. Indeed, trying to connect with as many demand partners as possible can result in publishers running too many header tags simultaneously. This of course causes slower load times, which is counterproductive for publishers’ conscious of the importance of strong user experiences.
But some header bidding partners offer ‘time out’ functions which empowers the publisher and lets them determine what is an acceptable amount of time for their page to load before users drop off. Determining this, Sun advises, requires thorough testing to find the sweet spot.
What does the future hold? Innovation and expansion.
It has only been a year since header bidding has entered the digital advertising ecosystem, but its future looks bright.
ClearPier’s take on the header bidding solution is exchange agnostic and allows multiple exchanges to plug in whereas previous versions are exchange specific. Few tech vendors can boast this type of solution and even more attractive for publishers is ClearPier’s tag setup take less time and doesn’t require the publisher to place anything directly on their site.
As Sun puts it, “ClearPier’s ability to offer publishers with more granular settings will mean they get a more robust programmatic solution where latency isn’t a problem, and yield will grow. Our Premium and flexible demand partner selections combined with a DMP and DSP will help push the technology forward, and its expansion into mobile and video.”
Header bidding’s ability to facilitate fairer prices and transparency will indeed likely mean expansion beyond digital into video and mobile. But not before we see it work with high-impact units. As we move into 2017, the development of header bidding technology is definitely one to keep an eye on as it helps reshape the ad trading landscape.
Share
[sgmb id=1]
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.