How Does Header Bidding Work and Why It’s Great for Publishers?

In 2021, an average website made around $1000 per month from ads. If you pair it with affiliate marketing and other monetization sources, the figure rises to $2000-$3000 per month. 

One of the contributors to the revenue earned from the website is the ads. However, it is crucial to keep this ecosystem fair for advertisers and publishers. This is where header bidding comes. 

Learn more about bidding for ad space, how it works and how it can benefit publishers. 

What Is Header Bidding?

This term is defined as a process in which the publishers sell their ad inventory to the highest bidders. Advertisers can bid for an ad impression using different ad exchanges and networks. 

In this way, every advertiser gets a fair chance to reach an ad inventory. And publishers get to increase the value of ad space. This way, you can say that bidding for ad space helps both publishers and advertisers equally. 

The Process

The process of the bidding is completed within a second’s time frame. Also, the website page needs to have the bidding code in its page header to participate in the bidding. 

As soon as the user opens their browser and clicks on the website page, the ad exchanges/demand partners execute the bid. Execution of the bid is simultaneous, and then the highest bid is sent to the ad server on the publisher’s end to the inventory. 

This entire process gets completed in a designated time set by the publisher. Publishers can also control who can bid and the cost of each inventory. 

Benefits For Publishers

Publishers can benefit majorly from header bidding. Here is how a website owner can profit from being in the bidding ecosystem:

• Hiked revenue: More advertisers bid for ad inventory in this process. This allows increasing the fill rate of the impressions. More bids equal more chances of getting higher CPM. This will help in hiking the revenue earnings from ads on the website. Also, you can get more yield for each ad inventory that you put up. 

• Better control: When publishers participate in the bidding, they control who can bid and who cannot. This type of bidding controls who can bid for ad space. And can also prioritize some advertisers over others. This way, you can choose the advertisers whose ads will match the traffic needs, increasing authority in the niche. 

• More advertisers: In bidding, different ad exchanges can participate simultaneously. This can help choose advertisers that will help increase the website’s adaptability. This can be highly beneficial in diversifying the pool of advertisers. 

• Transparency: The bidding process is automated and keeps track of every bid and transaction made for ad impressions. Publishers can check auction details of each impression, increasing transparency. This helps in reporting and getting a better view of the revenue share. 

• High-quality ads: Advertisers can get competitive in reaching out to an audience. This way, an advertiser can bid higher. Which will help take a spot on the ad inventory of publishers. This type of competition leads to ads of higher quality that are beneficial for the website. 

• Better SEO: Lastly, high-quality ads and fast rendering help increase the website quality. Fast rendering helps reduce the loading time on the site. It gives a better user experience. This helps improve SEO rank on the search engine and helps improve the traffic in return. 

The header bidding process is fast and reliable that connects via different ad exchanges instead of one SSP. This increases the bids for each ad impression and filling rate. Joining the bidding helps increase the revenue and improve the SEO results of the site.