Top Header Bidders for 2022

If the future of digital advertising revenue is a wave you’re trying to catch, header bidding is your surfboard. It’s the perfect ad tech innovation to increase your revenue right now, and thousands of publishers have already taken their revenue from tepid to tubular with this simple change in their strategies.

Plenty of entrepreneurial ad tech folks have seen the potential in header bidding and created their own demand platforms to attract publishers and take in a share of the ad revenue pie that’s promising to just keep getting bigger. That means two things for you: you have options when you go to select a header bidding demand partner, and you have to find a way to choose between them.

Playwire can help with that. We’re deeply entrenched in header bidding and all the bells and whistles that come with it, so we know a thing or two about the best header bidding platforms. Read on to hear our take on the top header bidders for 2022.

Header bidding is great, but it takes a little doing and a lot of technical know-how to set up and run properly. You can go the DIY route , but there’s always the simpler, more effective option: Playwire. We’ll do header bidding and a ton of other revenue-driving tasks for you so you can focus on creating great content. Contact us .

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Read the Complete Guide to Header Bidding.

Definition: Header Bidding Demand Partner What is header bidding? A header bidding demand partner is a source of demand for your ad inventory. These are the networks you program your header bidding wrapper to send calls to when a user visits your app or website. These partners then call up their internal demand to bid in the auction for your inventory.

Most publishers know that having broad demand for your inventory is a good thing for your yield. It’s a relatively simple concept: more competition leads to better financial outcomes for the supplier (read: you, the publisher).

This is a big metric on which to measure header bidding demand partners — do they give you access to a ton of demand? If they don’t, they are unlikely to be worthwhile. If you’re left confused about how to choose the best header bidder, it’s a little simpler than you may think: you don’t have to choose one — you can choose several and include them all in your auctions.

Most Popular Header Bidding Networks Dozens and dozens of ad tech companies have tried to capitalize on the innovation that is header bidding , and many have done so successfully by providing a quality product that truly helps publishers grow their revenue. Below, we discuss the nine most popular header bidding demand partners, as reported in research published in 2021 .

1. Amazon Around 71% of all websites participating in header bidding include Amazon in their list of demand partners, and there’s a good reason for that. Amazon has nothing short of world dominance in a wide variety of industries — digital advertising included. That means they have plenty of demand for any publisher to access.

2. Xandr Although you might not have heard of it, the vast majority of publishers who are doing header bidding have. Xandr came in at a close second to Amazon, with 69% of websites using header bidding using the platform. Xandr uses Prebid’s header bidding framework to bring a wide variety of header bidding-related services to publishers on top of access to huge inventory demand.

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3. Index Exchange Sixty-two percent of publishers doing header bidding include Index Exchange in their deck of demand partners. With a focus on new ad tech developments and access to premium global demand, Index Exchange is certainly a contender for any publisher looking to increase their revenue with header bidding.

4. Magnite Telaria, the Rubicon Project and SpotX merged their wide access to advertiser demand to create Magnite, a header bidding demand partner that takes a “header bidding made easy” approach to its marketing. By all accounts, the approach is working — 53% of publishers use Magnite in their header bidding strategies.

5. PubMatic PubMatic has built an enterprise header bidding wrapper on top of Prebid.js, and it’s attractive to a lot of publishers who are doing header bidding — 48% to be exact. Broad demand drives the attraction to this header bidder, but the wrapper they’ve built comes with some additional handy features, such as A/B testing, in-depth analytics and a baked-in identity management tool.

6. OpenX Procter &amp; Gamble, LinkedIn, HP and GM are among the buyers OpenX has worked with, which suggests that the demand this header bidder can get you access to is not only broad, but premium. That’s likely a big part of the reason why 43% of publishers who do header bidding work with OpenX.

7. TripleLift With 32% of publishers trusting them with their header bidding demand, TripleLift boasts a broad network of publishers and an equally broad network of buyers. TripleLift does programmatic advertising across a variety of channels and formats, but it maintains a special focus on native advertising.

8. Criteo If you have premium inventory to sell, you may want to consider Criteo. That’s because this header bidder offers a direct publisher-to-advertiser connection for premium buys. The platform says it works with more than 20,000 retailers and brands , and it works with a similarly impressive 31% of publishers who take advantage of header bidding.

9. Sovrn As a header bidding demand partner, Sovrn can accommodate the plug-and-play needs of publishers who aren’t fully ad tech-literate, but it also leaves room for more complex custom and open-source marketplace connections. All publishers fall somewhere on that spectrum, and 27% of those doing header bidding include Sovrn in their header bidding wrappers.

Want the Best in Header Bidding? Contact Playwire Those are the most promising header bidding demand platforms for the coming year. They all have some unique advantages, but they also have something in common: they require you to go in and manage your header bidding if you go DIY . That’s just not in the cards for many busy publishers.

The good news is that there’s another option. You can get all the benefits of header bidding — and direct sales , yield optimization , made-for-you video content and a bunch more — with Playwire. We’ll pick the best header bidding demand partners for your unique needs and handle everything from setup to campaign management.

Want to learn more? Reach out and contact us online .

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