Prebid Sees Its Ranks Swell as Publishers Seek Shop Talk

When there are more people at the table, it’s easier to find the best solution for a common problem. This piece of conventional wisdom is rare in business, particularly in the media industry, where a digital advertising market dominated by three platforms pits publishers against each other to compete for the remaining ad dollars. But there is one corner of the media ecosystem where collaboration is flourishing: Prebid, a seven-year-old open-source nonprofit organization, has grown significantly in the last several years by serving a vital function in the industry, according to seven industry figures who spoke to Adweek. “Prebid has provided a neutral ground for competitors to talk. It’s really allowed people’s defenses to come down,” said Ryan Nathanson, chief operating officer of She Media, a Prebid publisher member. “Other than the international space station, I can’t think of too many places where competitors can work toward something.” The nonprofit has more than tripled its members since 2019, expanding from around 50 members to over 250, said president Mike Racic. It has more than 100 paying members, including Criteo, Condé Nast and Havas Media—and is currently welcoming between three and five new members to its free, community tier per week. The Washington Post joined as a technology member—a $30,000 annual commitment—in early July. A technical hub first Prebid first gained the attention of the industry in 2015, when it disrupted the hegemony of Google by launching header bidding, a tool that lets publishers increase their ad revenue by inviting more demand sources to compete for their supply. Despite lacking a formal commercial body to promote the technology, it has become the unofficial industry standard. Since then, Prebid has added five more offerings to its product suite—Prebid Server, SharedID, Prebid SDK, Professor Prebid and Prebid Cache—all of which are available to all interested parties for free. The purpose of all Prebid tech is to make it easier for publishers to seamlessly connect with multiple ad-tech vendors, said Jeff Burkett, board member and publisher representative at Prebid and vice president of product for display media at Gannett. The neutrality of Prebid also prompted The Trade Desk, a demand-side platform, to make the nonprofit the official operator of its alternative identifier, UID 2.0. Prebid is developing its own cookieless product, called SharedID, but in keeping with its ethos of maximizing publisher choice, it intends to support multiple cookie replacements to allow publishers to test and learn. While Prebid software is free, the organization generates revenue by selling memberships, which it divides into four tiers: publishers, buyers, technology partners and leaders. The annual fees, which range from $6,000 per year for publishers to $50,000 for leaders, fund the nonprofit and confer different levels of access based on tier. Membership fees grant members voting rights, a Prebid email address and access to its thirteen groups called product marketing committees, which Prebid organizes into cohorts, such as the publisher task force, taxonomy task force and identity team. Each committee chooses a chairperson and meets on a weekly or biweekly basis, over the phone, to discuss technical issues, compare results from various experiments, hash out standards and—ultimately—design the next iteration of Prebid software. After years of running on volunteer labor, the increased revenue has recently allowed Prebid to hire its first full-time staff—five employees since August—including Racic himself. And it plans to grow further: Racic envisions Prebid eventually employing between 10 to 20 full-time staff—and it aims to expand its community into new channels, including connected television. Yahoo and Amobee DSPs Remove Google Open Bidding as a Source of Supply A unique place in the industry to collaborate Prebid is far from the only trade organization in the media ecosystem, but a number of characteristics differentiate it from groups like the IAB Tech Lab, said Patrick McCann, the senior vice president of research at Cafe Media and chair of Prebid JS. The organization is one of the few driven by and centered on the needs of publishers, a key appeal in an industry that has often put media organizations in a reactive, rather than proactive position, said Nick Kaplan, the director of programmatic at She Media. “Publishers have this reputation that we follow, that advertisers set the agenda,” Kaplan said. “But Prebid has given us the ability to see what is coming down the pike in three, six or nine months from now.” The nonprofit also differs from other groups in the highly technical makeup of its members. Rather than the IAB Tech Lab, which plays more of a thought leadership role in the industry, calls major platforms its members and leans toward the C-suite, Prebid attracts the ad operations staff actually responsible for building programmatic tech stacks. “At Prebid, by being vocal and being part of the process, you feel like you are making an impact,” said David Rowley, the senior director of data and identity products at News Corp. “You get to build and shape the product roadmap.” Uncertain times demand collaboration Some sources note that part of Prebid's growth is due to the growing urgency to share technical solutions. “Prebid is growing in importance because of a lot of the uncertainty around what happens after third-party cookies,” said Don Marti, vice president of ecosystem innovation at publisher member Cafe Media. “If you’re a publisher, to make your way forward into an unknown technical and regulatory environment—it helps to test out a lot of options against each other.” But for all its momentum, not all publishers have signed up: The New York Times is a notable outlier, stating that alternative identifiers are not a priority right now, largely because it's in the enviable position of having enough subscribers and first-party data. Despite this, McCann said he’s optimistic that more publishers and ad-tech companies will join the Prebid fold, as they see the limits of going at it alone. “There’s no way to keep up with open source,” McCann said. “A healthy open source project will move faster than any team can do.” The Trade Desk to Hand Control of Unified ID 2.0 to Prebid

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Prebid, of Header Bidding Fame, Sees Its Ranks Swell as Publishers Seek Shop Talk

The open-source nonprofit offers technical collaboration in an ever-changing industry

Catherine Perloff

Mark Stenberg

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Catherine Perloff

Mark Stenberg