Prebid, the open source piece of code that helps publishers collect bids, is struggling to balance the needs of its sell-side constituency with the buy side. Look no further than the controversy over how Prebid would handle transaction IDs.
After announcing it would pass transaction IDs on an SSP-by-SSP basis, Prebid reversed that decision last week. Now, publishers will have three choices: Don’t pass the transaction ID, pass it globally, or take the in-between path and choose the SSPs that will receive a transaction ID.
But that’s just one tension at play. At the Prebid Summit earlier this month, its foes were in attendance: The Trade Desk, which found its product goals foiled by the transaction IDs, and the IAB Tech Lab, which was upset to see how Prebid was (not) adopting its standards.
On this week’s podcast, we discuss the source of these tensions, some of which make sense when you consider the origins of Prebid itself. Once spurned by the IAB Tech Lab, it now sees the virtue of being a fast-moving organization with a smaller sliver of the industry to keep happy – though looking out for the sell-side interests hasn’t made its industry peers happy as of late.
Then, we consider Prebid’s role in the remedies phase of the Google ad tech antitrust trial. From the possibility that Google could donate some code to Prebid to how a changed setup could further level the playing field, how Google connects to Prebid will likely change in the future.
