Prebid - How Bidding Can Take Ad Revenue to New Heights

As a digital publisher, monetizing your website traffic is crucial to your success. Display advertising provides a valuable revenue stream, but you know you could be earning more from programmatic ad auctions. Waterfall setups with sequential bidding mean you’re not getting the highest possible CPM for every impression. There’s a solution that levels the playing field – Prebid. In this post, we’ll explore what header bidding is, how it outperforms old-school workflows and tips to maximize your revenue gains.

What Is Header Bidding and How Does It Work?

Header bidding is advanced bidding or pre-bidding. It is a new programmatic technique that optimizes yield for publishers. It revolutionizes the traditional waterfall setup that has publishers serving impression requests through ad servers before bidding begins. With header bidding, all demand sources get to compete simultaneously for each impression via a unified auction.

Here’s how it works!

When a user visits your site, a header bidding wrapper activates behind the scenes. This wrapper pings all your demand partners at once to request bids for the impression as the page loads. The highest bid gets passed to your ad server to serve the corresponding ad.

Rather than networks bidding in sequence, they all bid at the same time, and the highest price wins. This real-time competition maximizes yield for publishers. Networks also get a fair shot at each impression. It’s a big improvement over waterfall setups.

Why Header Bidding Beats Waterfall Setups?

There are some compelling benefits to header bidding that leave old waterfall setups in the dust:

Higher revenues. When all demand sources compete on price in a unified auction, publishers see average revenue lifts of 20-50%. That’s a game-changer!
Level playing field. Every demand partner can access impressions simultaneously instead of in a set sequence. Greater fairness improves partner relationships.
Better page performance. With one wrapper request instead of multiple bid requests, pages load faster. Users appreciate the reduced latency.
More granular controls. You can adjust bid weighting and set price floors to optimize yield on different placements.
Incremental revenue. Header bidding monetizes impressions on pages that may not have warranted ad placements before. More value from your site traffic!

How to Get Your Site Header Bidding Ready?

Implementing header bidding is relatively straightforward. Just follow these key steps:

Choose a header bidding wrapper. Open-source options like Prebid.js offer flexibility.
Integrate and test demand partner SDKs. Make sure their tags fire correctly.
Set up partner priority if needed. Assign weights if you want certain demand sources to take precedence.
Add wrapper code to all site pages. Insert the header bidding code wherever you want auctions.
Monitor results and optimize. Adjust partner weighting, price floors, etc. to maximize revenue.

With a savvy setup in place, all that’s left is letting the earnings roll in. Most publishers see the header bidding revenue bump within a month.

Tips to Maximize Your Revenue Gains

Once you’ve made the switch to header bidding, use these pro tips to optimize your setup and earnings:

Disclose auction mechanics to buyers. Transparency on your minimums and how the auction works remove the guesswork for optimal bids.
Analyze bid data to set ideal price floors over time. You can gradually increase floors as bidders reveal their true valuations.
Identify high-value user segments. Set higher floors during peak traffic times or for premium placements to capture more revenue.
Make the most of first-price auction dynamics. Disclosed floors encourage buyers to bid their full value.
Test different wrapper partners. See which one drives the highest results by trying a few.
Add more demand partners over time. Diversity produces more competition – just watch for latency.

With the right setup and optimization tactics, header bidding can transform your ad revenue. You’ll gain greater transparency, control, and earnings – it’s a total game changer.

Making the Most of First-Price Auctions

An exciting benefit of header bidding is opening the door for first-price auctions. With first-price auctions, the highest bid wins and pays the amount they bid rather than a discounted second price. For publishers, first-price auctions are a valuable tool to increase yield.

Some tips to maximize revenue with first price dynamics:

Disclose your auction mechanics like bid floors and minimums for optimal bids. Transparency sets proper value expectations.
Analyze bid data to understand true impression value. Slowly adjust floors up while monitoring fill rates.
Create premium impression segments. Set higher floors during high-traffic times or for valuable placements.
Run A/B tests with different floor prices and auction types. Find the ideal settings for each ad placement.

First price auctions let buyers bid with confidence and give you more control over pricing. Combined with header bidding, you can take your earnings to new heights.

Header Bidding – Exciting New Potential

Header bidding opens up an entire world of revenue potential through transparent, unified auctions. As a publisher, you gain more control, granular insights, and the ability to maximize yield through competition. Best of all, you don’t need a major tech overhaul. With wrapper solutions like Prebid simplifying setup, the benefits far outweigh the lift.

Prebid – How Header Bidding Can Take Your Ad Revenue to New Heights?