When everything is changing all around you, it’s a great time to recalibrate.
Prebid.org, which oversees the open-source header bidding software of the same name, is confronting major change both internally and across the ad tech industry.
In May, Prebid announced that its president, Mike Racic; its chairman, Garett McGrath; and Christian Janelli, its director of product management, were all leaving the organization.
Their departure comes as digital publishers – Prebid’s main constituency – face AI search-driven downturns in traffic and revenue, and the broader programmatic ecosystem experiments with new agentic AI sales tools.
But instead of seeing this as a bad time for a leadership shake-up, Katie Morgart, Prebid’s VP of marketing and strategic partnerships, believes “it’s kind of perfect timing.”
“With the industry changing as a whole, as we look at new products or initiatives or working groups,” Morgart said, “this is an opportunity to reset.”
Last week, Prebid appointed OpenX CTO Joel Meyer as its new chairman after naming him interim chair following McGrath’s departure. Meyer has been a member of its board since 2023 and has also served on the IAB Tech Lab’s board since last year. As a CTO with 20-plus years of engineering experience, he brings a deeply technical perspective as Prebid adapts to a fast-changing programmatic landscape.
Meyer’s first top priority is finding a new Prebid president who can meet the moment, he said. The org hopes to name a replacement in time for the Prebid Summit in NYC on October 13.
Beyond that, Prebid’s mission remains the same, Meyer said, which is giving publishers the tools they need to monetize while promoting open collaboration between industry stakeholders – a picture now complicated by the emergence of competing agentic tools.
Meyer spoke to AdExchanger about Prebid’s next phase.
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