Last month, a federal court ordered Google to integrate with Prebid but didn’t say how. So Prebid is writing the instructions itself.
The organization is moving ahead with a proposal to let ad servers bid into Prebid rather than Prebid bidding into ad servers, which is how Prebid auctions currently work.
Prebid previewed this new auction model at the Prebid Summit in New York City on Tuesday. The proposed framework is currently in the public comment period, and the working group behind it hopes to have it formalized by the end of Q1, at which point it would be rolled out in a future Prebid update.
The working group first pitched the proposal in April in anticipation of the possibility that Google could be forced to split up Google Ad Manager (GAM), which bundles the AdX ad exchange and its ad server, formerly known as DoubleClick for Publishers, into one product.
As we now know, the court decided not to pursue a breakup of GAM as a remedy to Google’s ad tech monopoly.
However, reorienting the ad auction so ad servers bid into Prebid lets publishers access demand from Google AdX without also having to use Google’s ad server. In other words, it’s a way for Prebid to effectively unbundle GAM, even if the court decided not to.
The change would also give Google a ready-made way to meet the Prebid integration requirement that Judge Leonie Brinkema mandated as part of the court’s remedies.
But, more importantly, it should make publishers less dependent on GAM while giving them more freedom to choose ad servers and run auctions in a way that benefits their business, according to Olly Burns, CTO at publisher monetization platform Teal and a co-author of the Prebid proposal, who spoke to AdExchanger in advance of the Prebid Summit.
Making Google’s Prebid integration happen
The court set three main requirements for how Google must work with Prebid. Google has to:
- Let AdX demand bid into ad auctions independently of its ad…