Publishers have a wide range of options to monetize their content online. That's why we’ve built flexibility and a variety of features into Google Ad Manager, giving publishers choice in how they sell ads on their properties. One way many of them choose to sell their inventory is through header bidding, which runs an auction among multiple ad exchanges on a user’s device before calling the publisher’s ad server. Today, about 90% of large publishers use header bidding,[539f3f]with many using a mix of header bidding and server-side solutions like Open Bidding to maximize revenue.

While Ad Manager has always enabled publishers to use header bidding, today we’re introducing new features to improve header bidding support. These updates make it easier for publishers to manage the process and provide new insights on ad performance.

An easier setup process

The current process to set up header bidding can be resource-heavy and time consuming, requiring publishers to set up and manage hundreds to thousands of line items and ad creatives. To simplify this, we’ve developed a new way for publishers to set up header bidding through yield groups.[083ff2]In just a few steps, publishers can make their ad space available to header bidders — similar to how they can specify what ad space they want to sell with Ad Exchange or Open Bidding. The header bidding demand is then included in the unified auction.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working with publishers to test this optional feature and incorporate their feedback into the development process. Over the next couple of weeks, we will open this beta to more publishers and move to open beta this summer.

“The new workflow has made our process of setting up header bidders significantly simpler, allowing our team to focus on more strategic work.”

Evan Pfeffer, VP Programmatic Solutions, Bustle Digital Group

“Using Ad Manager’s yield groups for header bidding solves for the complex setup and maintenance issues when using an independent auction like Prebid. It’s a strong feature and should be considered by any publisher who is intimidated by the technical aspects of header bidding."

Steve Mummey, SVP Digital Ad Revenue & Technology, AccuWeather

"It's been great to partner with Google to test its improved support for header bidding in Ad Manager. Google Ad Manager and Prebid are both important to our business. This enhanced communication between them is an exciting development, and we anticipate this feature will simplify set up work for our ad operations team.”

Patrick McCann, SVP Research, CafeMedia

"We are excited to see Google making strides towards simplifying the header bidding workflow; it's an important step for our industry and one that gives publishers the power of choice. We look forward to working with the team to ensure our publisher partners are able to take advantage of this solution, save time and resources and ultimately drive higher yield."

Mike McNeeley, SVP Product, Index Exchange

Improved reporting for all demand sources

We’ve been working on additional reporting features to give publishers greater insights on header bidding performance. A few months ago, we introduced a new type of Data Transfer file, which shows publishers the amount buyers would have needed to bid in order to win the auction.[083ff2]This allows publishers to share data related to outcomes from Ad Manager auctions with all buyers they work with, including their header bidding partners.

We’re also developing a new reporting feature to provide greater performance insights to publishers who continue to use line items to set up header bidding. Over the next few weeks, we’ll release demand subchannel reporting. With this new feature, Ad Manager will automatically detect which line items are being used for header bidding — allowing publishers to more easily compare header bidding performance alongside their other demand sources.

Greater choice and control for publishers

We strive to give our partners flexibility and choice to best support their business goals. That’s why Ad Manager has always given publishers the option to integrate with the advertising technologies they choose, and we continue to focus on evolving our platform to meet our partners’ needs.

As part of an overall resolution of the French Competition Authority’s (FCA) investigation, we’ve been working with regulators and publishers to develop these features, making it easier to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies. While we still believe header bidding presents drawbacks such as latency and a poor user experience, among others, we remain committed to providing publishers with choice through product interoperability.

We look forward to continuing to test and build on these features with publishers over the coming months, and sharing progress along the way.

In today's environment, managing a digital ads business is complex. You have different types of content, deals, auction rules, even technology solutions. To extract the most value from your sites and apps, you need to be able to take all of these things into account at the same time. So when a user clicks on an article, presses play on a video, or opens your app, they’ll be served the ad that generates top dollar for you, while receiving a first-rate user experience. 

With Google Ad Manager, partners can manage and optimize their direct deals and auctions across all of their inventory, including inventory sold with third-party advertising technologies, from one powerful platform. Our yield management solutions are designed to help publishers streamline their processes, so managing a variety of demand sources is not just simpler, but additive.

Let’s take a look at some of our direct, indirect, and yield management features that can help you make the most revenue from your inventory.

Perfecting the direct deal

Direct deals are an important aspect of nearly every publisher's ad business, so Ad Manager allows partners to strike them in a variety of ways. While we’ve long had the capability to help publishers facilitate traditional reservations, we are seeing strong adoption of our Programmatic Direct deal types, particularly Programmatic Guaranteed.

Programmatic Guaranteed

In 2019, 85 of Ad Manager’s top 100 global publishers transacted Programmatic Guaranteed deals. And according to internal Google data from 2018 through 2019, the number of Programmatic Guaranteed deal orders placed increased by over 65 percent. 

The Programmatic Guaranteed deal type simplifies the reservations workflow by combining the precision and control of direct deals with an automated media buying process, helping secure inventory for advertisers and revenue for publishers. The deal workflow also helps eliminate cumbersome and manual processes, such as exchanging tags, troubleshooting discrepancies, overseeing billing and reconciliation, as well as delivers performance benefits for advertisers.

According to a recent Google sponsored white paper from Harvard Business Review, top publishers embracing automated reservations like Programmatic Guaranteed have freed their direct sales teams to develop more strategic client relationships with their advertisers while offering a wider variety of deal types across their entire portfolio. 

A better environment for indirect demand 

After fulfilling your most premium campaigns through reservations, Ad Manager can help you earn more with solutions to manage all your programmatic demand sources. When it comes to ad auctions, a lot of things need to happen in a short amount of time. Subtle differences in how you connect your demand sources, configure your auctions, and deliver ads across your sites, apps, or channels can have a meaningful impact on how much revenue you’ll earn. Below are a few solutions that we’ve developed to ensure that you make optimal revenue, while also delivering first-class experiences for your users. 

Open Bidding (formerly known as Exchange Bidding)

Open Bidding allows you to invite multiple third-party exchanges and ad networks to compete for your ad inventory in a unified, real-time first price auction. This solution reduces operational complexity and minimizes latency helping you achieve a higher yield on your ad inventory without sacrificing your user experience. 

Open Bidding works across all your inventory, including web and app, display and video. It also provides customized tools, unified reporting, simplified billing, and complete auction transparency.

App Mediation

App Mediation, also referred to as mediation, increases mobile app revenue by calling a series of third-party ad networks in order of highest expected yield, based on static prices set by partners, or pulled from third-party ad networks periodically, to fill an ad request. It maximizes yield and fill rates by passing the request along in sequence. So if one ad network doesn’t fill the request, the next ad network in the sequence gains an opportunity.

For mobile app, we’ve designed mediation and Open Bidding to work well together. Ad Manager first selects the highest paying bid from Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding buyers and inserts the winning price in order into the mediation chain. This way app partners get a unified mediation chain, that’s optimized for yield and inclusive of real-time bids.  

Smarter Ad Breaks for video and advanced TV

We’ve brought our extensive experience with video to bear to develop the Smarter Ad Breaks feature suite for video and advanced TV partners. The suite helps maximize the value of commercial breaks by combining the control of linear TV selling with the addressability of digital advertising. You can customize each individual ad slot to build a personalized commercial break, known as an Optimized Pod. You set the pod length and Ad Manager will look across open auction, sponsorships, direct deals, and Programmatic Guaranteed deals to slot in ads yielding the highest possible revenue. 

Using the Smarter Ad Breaks feature suite provides higher monetization through enhanced yield management, time savings through seamless workflow efficiencies, greater user experience through lower ad load latency, and brand safety protections like unified competitive exclusions. 

Bring it all together, with comprehensive yield management

The most difficult task when trying to make the most from your inventory is knowing the best buyer to sell your inventory to. That’s why harmonizing your direct and indirect demand in a single, powerful auction is important. Ad Manager offers a suite of yield management solutions designed to help you find the best model for monetizing inventory across all of your advertising partners.

We start by maximizing your yield with a single, unified first price auction that reconciles all of your guaranteed campaigns and non-guaranteed advertising sources—including real-time bidding partners (such as Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding partners) and non-guaranteed line items (including those used in header bidding implementations). This all happens in a transparent and fair marketplace to help you manage your inventory as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

In addition to increasing yield through competition, we’ve also developed automated and machine learning features like Dynamic Allocation, First Look, Optimized Competition, and Target CPM to help you make the most revenue possible without having to do anything. In fact, in 2018 we made nearly 50 optimizations aimed at improving publisher revenue, that generated 15% more revenue on mobile web and 9% more revenue in total for publishers using Google Ad Manager.

To learn more about how Ad Manager can help you manage your digital advertising business, read the complete blog series here or visit our new feature brief archive in the resources section of our website. And stay tuned for our next post on, Safeguard your advertising business.