Prebid is busy. The organization in charge of the open-source publisher wrapper is growing in influence and scope, as evidenced by the three Prebid-centered stories we discuss on the podcast this week.
First up, Amazon is making good on its decision to build an adapter for the Prebid wrapper. The move reduces complexity for publishers and signals a big change for Amazon, which previously put resources into its trappers, TAM (transparent ad marketplace) and UAM (universal ad marketplace).
Plus, a Big Tech player integrating with Prebid shows that it can, in fact, be done. A proposed remedy to the Google antitrust trial would have Google integrate with Prebid. And if a competitor can integrate without a fuss, why can’t Google?
Then, we talk about the drama resulting from Microsoft deciding not to cache video files for auctions that go through Prebid. The company was spending tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on the data center fees. Why Microsoft? AppNexus, which it acquired, developed the Prebid code in-house before making it open source.
The decision comes after Microsoft shut down part of its acquired ad tech business, the DSP Microsoft Invest, in May of last year.
Finally, Prebid is taking the reins of the code for a standard sell-side AI agent for ad tech. The code behind the seller agent, proposed as part of AdCP, will be open source and handled by Prebid. The addition of a new codebase for Prebid is a logical expansion, which speaks to the group’s growing influence in the ad tech community – and harkens back to the backroom drama that made Prebid a standalone organization in the first place.
