We know header bidding can increase revenue and there’s no doubt that with an optimal header bidding setup, you can achieve your full revenue potential. But it’s easier said than done. You have to keep a tab on several factors — from timeout to price floors to bidder performance. While we agree that every factor is important, the significance of them on your bottom line varies a lot.
Not All Are Equal:
For instance, you can change your price floor, but there’s no guarantee that it will have a considerable impact on CPM. However, if you happen to add a new bidder partner to the header bidding stack, there’s a good chance that your revenue will increase.
We’ve worked with hundreds of publishers and tens of bidder partners in the last 6 years and if you ask us what made a substantial impact on the revenues — we would certainly say ‘bidder partners’.
Apparently, bidder partners are the demand and they ultimately bid for your impressions. But most, if not all, tend to overlook the bidder performance data. While it’s easy to add more and more demand partners to intensify the competition, you need to know that they aren’t going to bid proactively as you expect them to.
According to Confiant’s ‘Demand Quality Report’, just 13 SSPs accounted for 80% of the ad impressions they have tracked. With Supply Path Optimization (SPO), media buyers are cutting down the number of platforms they work with. In other words, DSPs are trying to figure out the efficient path to reach the supply, avoid bid duplication, and reduce ‘listening cost’.
This means, you don’t need to have tens of bidder partners, you just need the right ones. You’ll be able to increase the revenue and page load speed as well. But here’s the problem — every publisher is unique and it ultimately depends on the audience they attract. So, it’s difficult to know who are the right demand partners, to begin with.
Well, we had the same question and in this article, we’ll get you an answer.
Methodology:
We analyzed over two billion ad impressions, spanning hundreds of web properties, to exactly know the top-performing demand partners based on their revenue contribution. We considered demand partners on the client-side (as it tends to be the most popular form of header bidding ). To ensure you can relate, we listed the top partners based on the geographies.
Limitations:
- The distribution of ad impressions among the geographies isn’t equal and it varies a lot. For instance, we process higher ad impressions from India and the U.S because of our client-base.
- We analyzed data from a part of our client base over a period of three months (Q4 2019). So, the data might look different if we analyze a different set of publishers from a different time period.
- We compared the revenue contribution of every bidder partner we work with during the time period. If a partner isn’t live across all the sites during the complete three months, then we exclude it.
- We cut down the chart to include the top 7 to 8 partners.
Intended Audience:
We didn’t consider geographic location when the ad impressions were less than 50 million. Yes, some data, for instance, UAE top demand partners, would be from a sample size of 100 million ad impressions. Though it isn’t a big number, our intended audience is mid-sized publishers.
Why? Premium publishers with hundreds of ad impressions can get into the SSPs/Exchanges without any problem and they’ll likely have in-house data analytics to derive insights much granular than this. On the other hand, mid-market publishers and smaller media brands need some assistance and that’s where we come in.
For a publisher with 10 million PVs, this data will definitely prove useful. If you are from India and the US, know that we process more than a billion ad impressions from those geographies.
Now, as we cleared the limitations and methodology, it’s time to get into action.
Best Header Bidding Partners for Publishers
Top Header Bidding Partners in U.S
Here are the top programmatic demand partners and their revenue contribution (in %) for the US publishers.
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google AdX | 51.15 |
| AppNexus | 14.45 |
| Index Exchange | 8.15 |
| Rubicon | 8.46 |
| Amazon | 7.25 |
| Verizon Media | 5.25 |
| Openx | 2.54 |
| PubMatic | 2 |
| Others | 0.75 |
Top Header Bidding Partners in India
Here are the top programmatic demand partners and their revenue contribution (in %) for the Indian publishers.
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google Ad Exchange | 54.45 |
| AppNexus | 14.06 |
| Index Exchange | 9.14 |
| Rubicon | 8.35 |
| Amazon | 7.45 |
| Verizon Media | 3.55 |
| OpenX | 1.15 |
| PubMatic | 1.34 |
| Rest | 0.50 |
Top Header Bidding Partners – UK
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google AdX | 52.20 |
| AppNexus | 15.22 |
| Index Exchange | 10.12 |
| Rubicon | 9.35 |
| Amazon | 6.25 |
| OpenX | 3.52 |
| Verizon Media | 1.64 |
| PubMatic | 1.10 |
| Rest | 0.60 |
Top Header Bidding Partners – AU
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google AdX | 50.80 |
| AppNexus | 15.15 |
| Index Exchange | 11.25 |
| Rubicon | 9.20 |
| Amazon | 6.75 |
| Verizon Media | 3.18 |
| OpenX | 2.10 |
| PubMatic | 1.02 |
| Rest | 0.55 |
Top Header Bidding Partners – Germany
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google AdX | 52.14 |
| AppNexus | 17.31 |
| Index Exchange | 11.35 |
| Rubicon | 10.35 |
| Amazon | 5.85 |
| OpenX | 1.29 |
| PubMatic | 1.00 |
| Rest | 0.70 |
Top Header Bidding Partners – UAE
| Demand Partners | % of Total Revenue |
| Google AdX | 50.38 |
| AppNexus | 16.25 |
| Rubicon | 10.56 |
| Index Exchange | 10.45 |
| Amazon | 5.25 |
| Verizon Media | 3.25 |
| PubMatic | 2.30 |
| OpenX | 1.06 |
| Rest | 0.50 |
What’s Next?
Your decision. Are you working with the right partners and if you are, how’s the revenue contribution look like? While we don’t consider this as an accurate depiction, you can use it as an estimate to derive actionable insights and take the next steps. Also, let us know what we should try to answer next in the comments.
