What is Header bidding?

Header bidding is a technique in programmatic advertising that allows publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously before making a call to their ad server. In traditional waterfall auction systems, publishers offer their ad inventory to one ad exchange at a time in a predetermined order. With the ad server only makes a call to the next exchange if the previous one did not fill the impression.

With header bidding, publishers can offer their ad inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously, allowing them to access a larger pool of demand partners and compete in real-time auctions for each ad impression. This helps to increase competition, fill rates, and ad revenue for publishers.

Headline bidding became the next logical step in the evolution of the ad tech ecosystem. Compared to RTB, which conducts several auctions in a row, with headline bidding. All players can participate in the auction at the same time.

Adtech tool that allows publishers to offer their impressions to many platforms and advertisers that use them. Header bidding removes the veil of ignorance between advertisers and publishers about the market price of inventory.

It allows publishers to access different markets, connect new demand partners and increase the price of their inventory.

In head-bid auctions, all DSPs have equal access to the auction and compete for the price instead of participating in the auction. We have already explained what motivated publishers to use header bidding. How does header bidding work?

How does header bidding work?

The header bidding connection is implement using a JavaScript wrapper installed in the header of the web page. The wrapper is a labeled container.

For the ad tag, you would allocate the ad slot to another advertiser or call demand partners. One after the other, but not with the header container, where all parties get a connection to the auction immediately.

A container technology streamlines demand partner management for publishers. By simply adding bidder IDs to the container, publishers can quickly connect more stakeholders to deals.

In the early stages of adoption, however, header bidding was plague by low standards, fragmented solutions, and almost no collaboration between vendors.

Despite the countless advantages, even the Prebid solution is not that easy to implement on the website.