White Paper | Author: Saurabh Golani, Xandr, Programmatic Council Operations subgroup
There are many questions which come to the decision maker’s mind when they hear words like Programmatic, RTB, header bidding, ad-networks, etc. What is programmatic? What is real time bidding and what is header bidding? Are they all the same or are they some new fancy jargon? What does it cost to me? Will that eat my existing direct business or do I need an army of experts to handle this?
Let us simplify one by one and see how the Programmatic ecosystem works!
Programmatic can be both buy side as well as sell side. It helps publishers to earn best value for their ad impression, and for buyers it helps them to get more accurate returns for every dollar spent.
Programmatic is a universe or a chain (pearl necklace) which binds or accommodates the new advertising terms/technologies inside it. RTB, Header bidding, Schain, SPO, ads.txt, PMP Deals.
Programmatic is the application of technologies to automate the buying and selling of digital advertising. RTB is the bidding-based approach to buy or sell the inventory. The RTB process can be done in many ways, but recently the most effective ones for publishers are header bidding and programmatic deals (guaranteed and non-guaranteed). Header bidding is nothing but a process which simultaneously sends the bid request to all available buyers. It also solves the issues which came with the waterfall method where the auction used to happen sequentially.
Current state or Background
It is available across all formats :
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Display
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Mobile
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Social
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Video
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Connected Devices
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Native
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Audio
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Digital OOH
Future Trends and Predictions
Header bidding has been a publisher’s best friend in display but has not been the case with video as publishers have been struggling with the setup and options of video header bidding.
Questions like : setting the inbuilt tech/team for header bidding or to use any external wrapper, and in that case, which one?
Conclusion
Programmatic and header bidding solutions which will cover data solution, display, native, video and CTV, will be super hit. The companies which educate the publisher so they understand the programmatic ecosystem, and also help them with customisation and modifications, will reap the benefits. There is no one size fits all, but after a couple of iterations the publisher can find the best possible way to monetise their whole inventory stack using the best practise from both the world of direct as well as programmatic advertising.