Page 14 - AeM_Sept_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Header bidding is great –

but Southeast Asia isn’t ready

Ambient Digital’s CEO Andrew Stephens looks at why A technology misunderstanding
advertisers in Southeast Asia aren’t jumping on the
header bidding bandwagon – even though the benefits In Southeast Asia, header bidding is becoming a topic
are obvious.
of extreme interest as both publishers and advertisers
Header bidding is the latest buzzword in ad tech, and realise its potential. However, marketer and publisher
with good reason. It’s shaken up online advertising in a understanding about the technology remains patchy.
way that is perhaps only comparable to the emergence
of real-time bidding and programmatic advertising. None of this comes as a huge surprise. Back when pro-
grammatic advertising took off in mature markets, ad-
The benefits for advertisers and publishers are obvious. vertisers in the region thought of it as a re-marketing
Header bidding was born at a time when Google con- tool, rather than about the major insights it offers on
trolled the entire ecosystem and essentially had first dibs digital consumer behaviour.
on a publisher’s inventory, in turn leading to concerns
over whether publishers were getting the best price. Ad Much of the confusion around the technology is legiti-
tech companies meanwhile felt like they didn’t have mate but totally addressable (full disclaimer: header
equal access to quality ad space. bidding is available via our SSP and we are currently
working with some publishers on integrating it). Pub-
Header bidding levels the playing field by giving advertis- lishers have reported that auctioning off impressions to
ers equal access to publishers and allowing them to sub- multiple sources all at once causes latency on their
mit their bids before page load and at the same time – web pages.
fetching a higher price for publishers (some report 40%
higher CPMs), and improves performance for advertis- We already know that heavy web pages drive readers
ers. away or forces them to install ad blockers – but if done
right and implemented correctly header bidding doesn’t
So, what’s the catch? affect load times, in fact it could bring it down. This
14 September 2017 - Immersive & Engagement Marketing (AR / VR)