Seven years ago, as publishers were using header bidding to level the online auction with Google, Prebid was a bit of open-source header-bidding code developed by AppNexus.
Fast-forward to today, and that code is now Prebid.org, a standalone industry standards body producing widely adopted open-source tech.
The story of how Prebid.org came to be – and almost didn’t – is an important one for the industry. Not just for the Prebid organization, but as an example of how smaller, independent players in the space might support one another, as everyone bows under the weight of Google’s incumbency.
Prebid.org actually had a chance to join the IAB Tech Lab in 2021. AdExchanger learned from two sources with knowledge of the matter that Tony Katsur submitted a proposal to acquire the open-source standards group shortly after taking over as Tech Lab CEO.
Katsur submitted a short, written proposal for how a potential merger between Prebid and the IAB Tech Lab might work, said one Prebid board member. It was not an offer with a dollar figure.
The Prebid board declined the offer and, shortly thereafter, formalized as a standalone standards org, including hiring Mike Racic as the first president in 2022.
The failed proposal to merge was, in fact, the second time Prebid and the IAB Tech Lab tried to come together. And the reasons why Prebid never became part of the IAB Tech Lab speak to the power dynamics at play within ad tech.
Pre-Prebid
Back in 2017, when Prebid was first taking off as a header-bidding wrapper, AppNexus and other ad tech companies advocated to incorporate the header-bidding spec into the IAB Tech Lab, according to Brian O’Kelley, former CEO of AppNexus, who dredged up the Prebid saga in his testimony during the DOJ-Google ad tech antitrust trial.
O’Kelley saw Prebid’s natural home as the IAB Tech Lab, the industry’s technical standards operator, which controls specs like OpenRTB. “[The Tech Lab’s] entire point of existing was to take in and develop technology like this,” O’Kelley said during a video deposition that was played during the trial.
There was one obstacle in the path. Google was a Tech Lab board member and the largest financial contributor to the IAB overall, O’Kelley said. Google “objected vehemently” to the idea of Prebid, and thus header bidding tech, being incorporated by the industry’s main standards org, he said under oath last year.
Google’s response to the proposal “was so negative that we ended up having to create an independent association,” O’Kelley said.
Post-Prebid
By denying Prebid a place within the IAB Tech Lab, Google used its sway to quash adoption of header bidding, O’Kelley said. He suspected they were alarmed that header bidding would even the playing field for third-party ad tech by removing Google’s advantageous last look on all bids in its auction.
But your fears will always find you on the roads you take to avoid them.
By forcing programmatic vendors to go at it alone – committing to open-source engineering development, joining and funding Prebid as a separate organization and pushing for header-bidding adoption without the IAB’s backing – Google may have inadvertently strengthened the monster it meant to vanquish.
By the time Katsur took over the IAB Tech Lab in 2021 and saw the opportunity to bring header bidding back into the IAB fold, Prebid.org was moving too quickly to be caught.
The Prebid board declined Katsur’s offer for the Tech Lab to take over the tech because Prebid is “a software organization,” said one board member, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential matters.
“There are big advantages in making binary decisions: Do we produce code that does X, or not? It’s pretty nice not to be tangled up in questions of policy,” the board member said.
Katsur declined to comment on the Prebid acquisition proposal. Google did not respond to request for comment on O’Kelley’s testimony and its purported attempt to prevent header-bidding adoption.
Having matured a bit as an independent organization, Prebid now has a real benefit of speed and clear purpose, Heather Carver, CRO of Freestar and a Prebid.org board member, told AdExchanger.
Within the Tech Lab, there are often immense bureaucratic hurdles to progress, she said. The Tech Lab tends to develop new tech slowly, and always with major concessions because the IAB must balance so many competing interests.
Prebid.org, by contrast, has a board that is on the same page and open-source developers from companies who are in the same boat and pulling in the same direction, Carver said.
Call it “move fast and fix things.”
The long road home?
Prebid.org was denied admission by the Tech Lab in 2017 and then returned the favor by turning down the Tech Lab’s acquisition overture in 2021.
But could – or will – the Prebid org someday become part of the IAB Tech Lab?
“Yes, I expect it will,” said a different Prebid board member, also speaking anonymously to speculate on how things might unfold.
Could the third time be the charm?
Although other Prebid board members prefer the org to remain independent, the same source said, the IAB Tech Lab is the natural eventual home of header-bidding tech. More importantly, the IAB Tech Lab has changed during Katsur’s tenure, the source added.
The Tech Lab now moves fast to ship new standards and is more willing to disappoint board members who prefer to delay, they said. If these changes for the Tech Lab stick, they said, and if someday Prebid matures to the point that it too is an organization that deals primarily in policy and consensus-building, “I can see header bidding finding its way home to the IAB.”
