Prebid is the main open-source header bidding wrapper used by most major publishers today. It forms the core of our Nucleus ad platform, helping maximize revenue and performance for all of our publishers.
And now, it’s one more way AdThrive publishers are leading the industry and making the internet a better place… An AdThrive team member was elected to the one and only publisher seat on the Prebid board!
To explain why this news is so big, it’s probably helpful to dive into Prebid a bit and, on the way, unpack a little of the history of digital advertising…
Header bidding and wrappers
Header bidding burst on the digital scene about five years ago. It was a brand-new technology that dramatically changed the way digital advertising worked, allowing publishers to offer their ad inventory to many different partners at once through a simultaneous auction.
Instead of working with one or two partners, a publisher could now integrate with many more — skyrocketing potential ad revenue!
But this increase in partners also led to increases in complexity. Every partner required custom code and getting all that code working in harmony was a real challenge.
Enter the concept of a “wrapper”, an additional piece of code that creates an organized framework for all partners to work together. This technology accelerated the growth of header bidding and created the world of digital advertising as we know it today.
AdThrive + Prebid
Prebid is by far the leading wrapper solution today and has become so popular that a non-profit organization (Prebid.org) was created to manage the project and ensure that it continues to support the open web.
We joined the Prebid organization in 2019, as a publisher member representing our community of AdThrive publishers — a privilege and responsibly we take seriously! We actively contribute improvements to the code that help not only our publishers but everyone who uses Prebid for their site. (You can read about some of those improvements here, here, and here.)
As Prebid has grown, the number of members has grown significantly and now includes Verizon, AT&T’s Xandr division, News Corp (publishers of the Wall Street Journal and many other newspapers), Business Insider, and more.
Like any other organization, Prebid has a board of directors that controls the direction of the group, helps set standards, and determines how to grow the organization.
Until now, there was no one on the board representing publishers, but as the number of publishers has recently grown significantly, all of the publisher members voted to have a single representative join the board…
And we’re proud to announce that this Prebid.org board member is on the AdThrive team!
Patrick McCann runs our data science and yield optimization team and will be representing us and all of our publishers on the board. Patrick’s team focuses on maximizing revenue for all AdThrive publishers through data and cutting-edge technology, and he’ll bring that publisher-first mentality to the Prebid.org board.
Making things better for all publishers, everywhere
Additionally, as the sole publisher representative on the board, we have the privilege of representing all publishers, globally.
Things aren’t getting any less complicated in the digital advertising industry and the pace of change is only accelerating, so we believe it’s crucial to stay on the cutting edge of developments and lead the charge for publishers!
As we work hard to build a creator-first future, we want to make sure that the ecosystem is healthy and all publishers are thriving, regardless of how they run advertising on their site.
AdThrive publishers aren’t just the first ones running new technology and earning more per ad anymore — together, we get to create the standards that drive the entire industry forward and make things better for all content creators everywhere!
