• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, May 4, 2017

Q1 revenue was lower than the same period a year ago, when Rubicon made $63.6 million in revenue. The net loss for the quarter was $15.8 million, which included $4.3 million in restructuring and other exit costs. In transition, the company named digital vet Michael Barrett CEO a couple of months ago.

In a conference call with analysts on Wednesday, Barrett said the company is focused on building stronger relationships with publishers, application developers, demand-side platforms, and agencies, increasing operating efficiency in a mobile-first world, and returning to revenue growth in 2018.

Rubicon entered the header bidding market late and is looking to recalibrate. Barrett said he’s encouraged by meetings with customers and industry-wide adoption of Prebid.js, an open source wrapper for header bidding.  He said that 90% of Rubicon’s sellers that currently use a header bidding wrapper have chosen the open sourced Prebid.js technology as a means of better enabling monetization of their inventory.

“Prebid.js offers buyers and sellers the ability to participate in a truly open, fair and unified marketplace. And since the technology is open-sourced and maintained by multiple members of the ad tech community, it also delivers a solution that is constantly updated to evolve to market innovations and shifts. Rubicon Project's participation in Prebid.js has helped to push the technology to the forefront and catalyze its adoption by other industry participants,” Barrett told analysts.