News Corp. and Insider Inc. Lead Publisher Charge to Swell Prebid’s Ranks

Formed in 2017, its ranks have recently been bolstered by News Corp., Insider Inc., Chegg and SHE Media. The stakeholders are collectively developing alternatives to Google’s sell-side ad stack, fueling the creation of a set of open source monetization tools.

“Publishers deserve a transparent ad-tech ecosystem, and Prebid provides an open-source solution to achieve just that,” said Stephanie Layser, vp of advertising technology at News Corp., in a press release. “The more publishers that contribute and code together, the better off the publishing industry is in creating a sustainable revenue stream through advertising.”

Jana Meron, svp of programmatic and data strategy at Insider Inc., added, “It’s just what the industry needs: an organization dedicated to transparency and efficiency in open-source bidding—throughout the entire supply chain.”

Prebid is backed by a diverse group of ad exchanges and demand-side players, with The Trade Desk recently joining its ranks, all of whom hope to diminish the sector’s over-reliance on a precious few providers, namely Amazon, Facebook and Google.

In particular, Prebid has made some headway in popularizing header bidding—a means by which publishers can better consider how to monetize their online ad inventory in real time—with many crediting it as a principal driver for some of the seismic changes Google made to its sell-side offering this year, such as the decision to implement first-price auctions.

“Prebid solved the fundamental challenge of providing an independent solution for header bidding,” said Emry Downinghall, vp of advertising at Chegg. “Today, Prebid offers granular insights to publishers and provides the ability for us to work closely with exchanges, buyers and other publishers on the future of ad tech.”

Meanwhile, Ryan Nathanson, svp of operations at SHE Media, noted how establishing an industry-wide consensus on tech standards, as opposed to having them dictated by a single entity, is crucial to the maturation of programmatic advertising.

The four new additions to Prebid join existing publisher members CafeMedia and Mediavine, plus a host of ad-tech outfits such as AT&T’s Xandr, Criteo and Rubicon Project.