• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 17, 2020

Havas Media Group, one of the first agencies to begin trading media programmatically, today announced it is also the first to join an up-until-now sell-side organization -- Prebid-org -- created to promote "transparent" header bidding across the ad industry.

“The digital media landscape is mired by opaque practices," Havas Media North America CEO Colin Kinsella said in a statement announcing that Havas Media has joined as its first agency dues-paying member.

"At Havas Media, we invest in media that matters and are deeply aligned in Prebid’s mission to execute open-source projects for the betterment of the digital media industry,” he added.

Prebid.org, which was formed in September 2017 by leading members such as Index Exchange, OpenX, and The Trade Desk, now boasts 57 members.

The company says it operates a variety of "open source" projects designed to improve programmatic trading transparency.

Havas Media noted that it's Prebid-org membership follows its launch of a new "social equity marketplace -- BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and LGTBQ+-owned media businesses -- so "clients can positively invest funds in underrepresented businesses."

Actually, Havas Media's move follows a similar one by GroupM's Mindshare, which created private marketplaces (PMP) for the LGBTQ publishers last year, and a similar one for the Black community earlier this year.