• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, January 25, 2016

AppNexus on Monday announced the launch of PriceCheck, a header bidding tool that enables mobile app developers to increase their yield through a transparent, multi-bid auction of their advertising inventory. 

In contrast to closed platforms that practice high-latency mediation, AppNexus’ technology simultaneously allows hundreds of DSPs and ad networks to bid on an impression. App developers can get real-time transparency into the value of each ad impression and control over whether or not to accept these bids, according to the company.

"The most important step mobile publishers can take to improve the monetization of their inventory is to know what it’s worth," said Ryan Christensen, SVP & GM, publishers, AppNexus, in a release.

PriceCheck, now available for banner, video and interstitial ad units, is an alternative to Software Development Kits (SDKs), the current mobile monetization standard. While SDKs send most impressions to ad networks without knowledge of how much an impression is worth to that network, PriceCheck more efficiently allocates inventory to the advertiser willing to pay the most, AppNexus claims.

Unlike SDKs, PriceCheck allows app developers to install the solution in a few minutes by eliminating code that duplicates the existing ad SDK’s API to send ad requests and pass results.