• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, April 4, 2017

Looking to educate advertisers and publishers on the potential of video header bidding, Videology on Tuesday released the latest installment of its Knowledge Lab series on video header bidding. It notes that header bidding, in this case, is a misnomer. The ad call is from a video player, not a page header.

Videology sees header bidding as another version of real-time bidding.

However, header bidding isn’t always the best solution for video. Instead of letting multiple demand sources bid at the same time, against each other, the company said its platform looks at a variety of inventory sources, then determines which one should be used in order to offer the most value.

Publishers are always looking for ways to increase yield, and video header bidding is one way of doing it, according to John Rogers, SVP, programmatic packaging and sales, Videology.

Videology also released the findings of a survey it conducted with Advertiser Perceptions that discovered most advertisers don’t have a good understanding of header bidding, overall. For example, the survey found only 25% of digital advertisers say they have a “good” or “very good" understanding of what header bidding is. In addition, 18% of digital advertisers say they understand the difference between header bidding in video vs. display, while 12% of advertisers and agencies say they’ve used header bidding for video in the past.

On Google’s removing its exchange’s “first look” preference, Rogers told Real-Time Daily via email: “With Google’s recent policy updates, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decline in the number of publishers embracing this technology. That said, publishers are going to continue to look for ways to increase yield on their supply. Header bidding does offer some of those capabilities, but it’s best suited for display inventory where inventory is much more abundant.

“While header bidding is one option that’s getting attention, I would argue that publishers should be thinking of ways to implement technology that can intelligently manage all of their inventory and then use optimizations to best leverage that inventory,” Rogers said.