Premium Publishers Report Yield, Monetization, and Management Benefits from Video Header Bidding

AppNexus, the world’s leading independent advertising technology company, announced client success with Prebid Video, built on Prebid.js, the industry’s most widely adopted open source header bidding technology. Premium publishers, including Ranker, FANDOM, and Diply, reported increased share of revenue through video header bidding, including eCPMs up to 100% higher than tag-based integrations; ease of integration and extensibility; advantages of customization; and optimized national and international yield.

“Prebid Video unlocks valuable video supply and raises the quality of the video marketplace, transforming video header bidding from early adopter status to a mainstream monetization strategy. We have seen more than one billion video header bidding requests monthly, and eCPMs are often well above average prices in video exchanges,” said Eric Hoffert, SVP, Video Technology, AppNexus.

Prebid Video is the latest technology built on Prebid.js. It enables publishers to monetize instream and outstream video inventory with customization and control across desktop and mobile, offering revenue optimization via premium demand partners, while reducing latency.

As with Prebid for display advertising, Prebid Video has proven a powerful monetization tool for publishers. Ranker, a Quantcast Top 30 site with 70+ million monthly unique visitors, integrated Prebid Video in the spring of 2017. Since that time, Ranker has observed a significant rise in revenue from video header bidding for instream and outstream.

“At Ranker, we have seen video header bidding eCPMs twice those of our tag-based partners, a significant increase reflecting the premium nature of our supply,” said Premesh Purayil, Chief Technology Officer, Ranker. “Our Q4 2017 revenue showed an even split between video header bidding and direct deals, with the former emerging as the principal driver of advertising revenue. Initially testing with over 50 tag-based video partners, we have already narrowed that down to 15 partners, streamlining our operations and improving efficiency.”

As well as a powerful monetization solution, Prebid Video is easy to integrate and set up. FANDOM, a leading entertainment media brand with 180 million monthly uniques (Quantcast), went live with outstream using Prebid Video in June 2017, with plans to explore instream expansion in 2018.

“Prebid Video has allowed us to extend easily from display to video header bidding, a crucial capability for omni-channel publishers,” said Lincoln Gunn, Director of Revenue Partnerships, FANDOM. “We have also been able to tap into international video demand and use multiple demand partners. These factors have enabled us to activate outstream revenue and move away from tag-based partnerships, leading to increased competition.”

Diply, a comScore top 10 Lifestyles website and the 66th largest domain in the U.S. with 42 million monthly unique visitors, built customized code within Prebid Video to facilitate competition between outstream video and banner units.

“Prebid Video enabled us to rapidly build a customized solution that uniquely supports our monetization strategy, producing strong returns for our outstream video offering,” said Sheri Ham, Vice President of Programmatic, Diply. “In a short period of time, we were able to achieve more than a million video header bidding impressions transacted daily.”

Prebid Video is available through prebid.org and supports all major video players, including video.js, JW Player, Brightcove, Kaltura, and Ooyala.

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