What does Header Bidding really mean for ad buyers and sellers?

A common theme in the current AdTech world is that no one knows what is going on. According to eMarketer, the fees earned by the ecosystem of partners that facilitate programmatic display transactions in the US were up almost 20% this year.

Today, the way sellers and buyers approach programmatic has changed since header bidding (HB) debuted.

The HB widespread adoption has also led to practices – such as SPO – designed to provide greater transparency into how much money ad tech take from each transaction.

But ad buyers need more pubs insights as targeting differentiators and SPO feels like isn’t really operational yet.

Also, when programmatic is run as a managed service directly by a DSP, there is another intermediary and also another fee the agency doesn’t receive.

So, the big agencies have gone beyond and started to cutting out their DSPs and going straight to SSPs and pubs, aiming to find out how programmatic ads are really sold (and how to find the best imps at the fairest price).
Indeed, agencies are increasingly instructing certain SSPs to sell them specific imps.

Sometimes agencies are financially compensated for their relationships with SSPs but pubs remain unconvinced, however, by the commercial rewards of facilitating such deals.

Other sources: see in the LinkedIn comments.

Previously posted by Luca Brighenti via LinkedIn.