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The Big Story: Dream A Little (Bid) Stream

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Programmatic auction dynamics can be arcane, even for the most technical among us.

Google has Open Bidding (nee Exchange Bidding), Amazon’s got Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) and Prebid predates them both, not to mention a host of other wrappers on the scene.

But what do buyers, exchanges and publishers have to say – and, more importantly, need to know – about the three most dominant auction solutions, and what are the main differences between these approaches to header bidding?

“It’s very complicated,” says Sarah Sluis, who shines much-needed light on the topic this week on The Big Story and in a detailed explainer piece.

Despite the complexity, publishers have been jumping in feet first, although Sluis points out that buyers aren’t necessarily as enthused: “A lot of DSPs are not big fans of the fact that they have to look at all this inventory. Not only are they seeing the same impressions from 20 exchanges, they’re seeing the same impressions from 20 exchanges times three … 60 bids for a single impression.”

Also in this episode, we check in with James Hercher on location in San Francisco at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference extravaganza where he was in the room when CEO Marc Benioff was interrupted during his keynote by a protester objecting to Salesforce’s contract with US Customs and Border Protection.

And the team weighs in on customer data platforms – Salesforce has got one now and so do all the marketing clouds. But is what they’ve got to offer new or just a way to take advantage of the CDP buzz?

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