• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, February 7, 2017

Programmatic native advertising platform TripleLift on Tuesday launched a server-side header bidding technology for native advertising called Apex. TripleLift said the technology, which took a year to develop, is built specifically for native ad inventory and addresses concerns with existing server-side technology that’s designed for banner ad placements.

Server-side header bidding represents an evolution in header bidding. It’s designed to help increase publisher yield and improve issues around ad latency. In order to protect readers’ experience, Apex only supports native ad formats vs. banners, pop-ups, and interstitials, according to Ari Lewine, co-founder and chief strategy officer of TripleLift.

Lewine also said Apex enables first price auction in header bidding, which ensures that the ad is awarded to the highest bidder regardless of whether the ad is from a third party or the publisher’s ad server. In other words, third-party programmatic bids and ad server campaign bids compete on a level playing field. Native ad buyers that want to use second price auctions can continue to use the TripleLift Native Exchange (TLX).

In addition, TripleLift said Apex is a response to the challenge publishers face in creating and managing templates for each native ad buyer and unique ad type. Apex creates and hosts native publisher templates, enabling them to accept demand from multiple native demand sources. It also uses machine-learning to optimize among the templates.

Intermarkets and The Guardian are among six publishers that beta-tested the product. “Native template management and optimization built on proven technology allows us to scale our native monetization much more quickly,” stated Erik Requidan, VP of sales and programmatic strategy, Intermarkets.

“Our partnership with TripleLift has allowed us to commit to respectful native ads and introduce a server-side solution that really raises the bar,” stated Brendan Cleary, programmatic sales director at The Guardian U.S.

“Publishers are really trying to monetize in-feed placements. They want a specific ad experience that respects the reader,” Lewine said. “We created a solution that brings the best of header bidding to publishers’ valuable in-feed ad inventory.”

Publishers typically have two different ad technology stacks—one for banner ads and more standard placements, and another for native, in-feed placements. Apex represents an addition to publishers’ ad stacks. So doesn’t it represent yet another technology integration headache? Lewine said TripleLift already supports existing client side header bidding. “Rather than publishers handling another integration, we handle it in our server. We’re managing the demand partner integrations on the publisher’s behalf. We’ll do the heavy lifting,” he said, acknowledging that the task of integrating multiple technologies is even more challenging in native advertising because of a multitude of different ad templates.

Working with Apex,TripleLift said publishers will be able to work with an unlimited number of demand partners via server-side header bidding.