5 Reasons why Header Bidding is Better than Google

This post was most recently updated on August 13th, 2020

One of the recent developments which rocked the digital advertising technology industry is header bidding. More and more people are now turning to this solution to maximize their site’s revenue and with good reason. There are five chief reasons why header bidding is slowly but surely being catapulted as the new favorite in terms of monetization versus Ad Exchange or Adsense:

1) Increased competition and granular nature of line item trafficking produce better yield (per ad size and per value of the bid). Sortable’s experiment of header bidding offerings on 100 websites revealed that there was a 58% increase in CPM. The increase in the competition provided a significant boost in revenues because there is more bidder for the impressions of the publisher.

2) Header bid solutions ditch cumbersome and occasionally over-predictive passback and waterfall setups. Since programmatic or header bidding already gets the bid values of the buyers upfront, there is no longer a need to pre-arrange the order through passbacks or waterfall chains. The ad optimizer no longer needs to predict because there is already an upfront revelation of how much each provider is willing to pay for an impression.

3) Freedom from the limitations of averaging bid values. In Google Adsense or Ad Exchange, there are limitations to having average bid values for optimization. Even if the advertiser is willing to pay more, the bid drops to the average value set on Google Ad Exchange. The revenue is also lost when it’s under the average value that was set. With header bidding solution, you can have the maximum possible amount without being worried that it is tethered to the average bid value.

4) Additional access to non-Google ad networks. The programmatic bidding framework is rightfully considered a threat by Google. After all, it allows for additional access to non-Google ad networks and increases the ability of your website to earn.

Read: 10 Best Ad Networks of 2015

5) Ad Revenues are safer. Revenue shares are better. Non-Google ad networks will be less likely to revoke all unpaid ad revenues on the spot – a stark contrast to Google’s practice once they disable your account. Also, header bidding networks offer better revenue shares for publishers.

There are downsides

Promising as it may be, there are some downsides. First, setting it up is more complicated. Many reviews reveal that given the nature of the inline Javascript code being inserted, site loading time can increase by 150 to 400 ms. There are also certain risks to yield in the long-term since buyers can now move their demand more freely to preferred publishers based on price observations over time. At this point, it is still too early to find comprehensive case studies on long-term effects to revenue but given the benefits, it’s surely worth giving a try.

Fortunately, our latest offering called MonetizeMore Demand (our product) reduces the complexity of issues presented by header bidding; it produces a single code to serve as a wrapper for the entire header bidding setup.

You can try it for yourself and see the difference. If you become one of our beta members, you can be the first to experience M2 Demand, get updates about header bidding, and receive the ‘Ultimate Guide to Header Bidding’ ebook.

Sign up for the beta.

Check out more related articles and guides about header bid technology:

• Header Bidding is the Real Alternative to Adsense
• The 6 Best Header Bidding Networks of 2015
• What is the Most Optimal Setup for Header Bid Networks?
• Is one header bid network enough for publishers?

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.