Header bidding is growing in popularity, and it’s becoming increasingly important for savvy marketers to have an understanding of the concept.
Bidding is great for publishers in most cases because according to some estimates, it can show a very significant increase over waterfall rates.
So what about advertisers? Are there benefits for them, and what should they know about the concept?
Transparency
One of the most important things for marketers and advertisers to know about header bidding is that it does reduce some of the transparency of the process for them. It’s great for publishers, but for advertisers, they don’t necessarily get to see things such as availability. It can also be tough to optimize impressions, although that’s likely to improve over time.
Most marketers are hoping to see more choices regarding seeing their position in the publisher ad server. In an ideal scenario, publishers would retain the control they like about header bidding, but advertisers would have more transparency available to them so they’d be able to make the most appropriate bids.
Premium Inventory
Header bidding is different from traditional bidding because rather than each ad exchange having a separate auction that happens one-at-a-time, all exchanges can bid at the same time, based on highest priority on the server.
That means that marketers and advertisers have more premium inventory available to them. Before this kind of programmatic advertising, there was the feeling that real-time-bidding was only giving access to the low-quality items that no one else wanted, but with header bidding, this gives programmatic buyers the chance to see initial inventories, with a priority that’s above direct orders even.
When advertisers are given a first look at inventory, this means they can then buy just the impressions they want, and they can place bids knowing the exact page where an ad will end up, and the audience that will visit that page.
That is also what leads to more revenue available to publishers, so this aspect of header bidding seems to be a win-win.
Multiple Marketplaces
With header bidding, since inventory might be available across many marketplaces, buyers have the opportunity to choose the channel where they want to buy impressions. At the same time, it’s important that as an advertiser you’re careful not to bid against yourself. If you have a solid demand partner, then this can help you avoid this particular situation.
Programmatic Advertising
The two key benefits of header bidding, which are more revenue available for publishers and premium inventory available to advertisers, it’s becoming one of the preeminent advertising bidding methods. There is the belief that as a result, the concept of programmatic advertising is one that’s likely to continue picking up steam as a favored method among not only publishers but also marketing professionals.
For advertisers, the key thing to keep in mind with header bidding is that it’s essential to choose the right provider partner so they can utilize this strategy as an effective and efficient way to improve overall marketing strategies.