Wrapper technology impacts more than your ops team. Whether you are considering new technology or exploring a new vendor, knowing what to look for in a wrapper is important for long-term monetization.
Some key items to consider when choosing a wrapper solution are whether it is open source or proprietary, the robustness of the UI and reporting, and whether it is limited to just client-side or server-side header bidding. Additionally, you should evaluate whether the wrapper can handle multiple ad formats and the vendor provides enterprise-level support.
Every publisher will have unique needs but exploring these core elements should provide you with a better fit. With the growth of open source communities within ad tech, such as Prebid.org, I will be discussing the publisher benefits of using an open source wrapper solution in this three-part blog series. This first post will dive into the efficiency and transparency offered by open source solutions.
Wrapper adoption
If it seems like you have been hearing more buzz lately about wrappers, you are correct. Publishers are adopting wrapper technology at an unprecedented pace. Per the Serverbid January 2018 report, nearly 80% of publishers are using a wrapper solution. But what is a wrapper, exactly?
A wrapper is a technology layer that facilitates bids from demand partners which are passed into the decisioning layer. Further, wrappers collect services like bid requests, analytics, tracking and viewability before sending everything to an ad server. Tag management also improves with the introduction of a wrapper. Ultimately, the benefits of using a wrapper to a publisher are greater efficiency, scale and transparency, all of which ultimately impact the bottom line.
Efficiency
First, I want to focus on one of the most important benefits of open source technology: efficiency. Open source wrapper solutions increase efficiency because they create access to the broadest set of demand partners at scale and provide more transparency which leads to improved monetization.
Having the ability to expand and innovate quickly gives you a competitive advantage. With open source solutions, publishers have access to a community of developers – and the code they create – so they don’t have to spend valuable time and resources building the code themselves. Thus, allowing faster innovation.
Prebid.js, the foundation of PubMatic’s OpenWrap solution, is updated on a continual basis by hundreds of developers, publishers, ad tech companies. Due to its open source nature and the fact it is now an industry standard, demand partners will often first build to the Prebid.org specs. This allows publishers access to the broadest set of demand partners which, in return, increases their revenue. The development community has agreed to specific standards for that set of code which makes it the easiest and most trusted source to implement.
Transparency
Additionally, transparency is the cornerstone of open source wrapper solutions. The collaborative and open nature of communities like Prebid.org instills transparency and fair competition into the ad tech ecosystem. The code produced by the community is more easily verifiable and allows everyone visibility into the tags used. Because competitors all contribute to the code, it prevents advantages to any one single technology provider.
The transparency is good for both publishers and buyers by instilling confidence in the fairness of the auction and ad tech ecosystem. It leads to greater publisher independence by reducing the need to rely on closed, propriety technology with unclear auction mechanics.
Why use an open source wrapper?
Increasing operational efficiency and transparency ultimately means improved monetization and a more sustainable, built-to-last publisher business. PubMatic’s OpenWrap solution works with open source code and is an enterprise-level solution for Prebid.js which supports hybrid header bidding. The use of an open source wrapper solution allows publishers to maintain independence, future-enable their business and control their ad decisioning. Let us know how we can partner with you to move into the open digital media future, together.
