Just when you wrapped your head around “programmatic”, a new variant of the data-driven advertising technology is creeping on to the scene.<\/p>\n
In so-called “header bidding<\/a>“, publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges before alerting their ad servers, intending to garner multiple bids on the same inventory and so make\u00a0higher prices.<\/p>\n Now the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the\u00a0umbrella which helps advertisers\u00a0move through the industry and which has laid down definitions for many formats, is taking an interest in the fledgling tech.<\/p>\n IAB industry initiatives head Joe Laszlo<\/a>, in this video interview with Beet.TV, describes “header bidding” as “a way to shift the ad transaction on to the web page itself, so that it happens on the client side, in a web browser”.<\/p>\n Laszlo says that’s good because\u00a0the process\u00a0“cuts the exchange out of the automated advertising transaction … header bidding creates a much more direct, seamless relationship between the published site and somebody who wants an ad on that site”.<\/p>\n But he acknowledges: “It\u2019s still very new. There\u2019s no clear standardized way to implement it. It potentially affects page load time and user experience.”<\/p>\n So\u00a0Laszlo is creating a new working group inside IAB to help educate the industry. He calls the process “Header Bidding 101”.<\/p>\n “(We will also) evaluate the ramifications and the business case for the IAB to launch a further project to help standardize how header bidding gets implemented,” Laszlo adds.<\/p>\n Ad-tech vendor OpenX is amongst the pioneers in the header bidding space. And \u00a0its recently-announced<\/a> Real-Time Guaranteed (RTG) system is now connecting with header bidding technology.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n