The white paper is based on internal data and research by PubNative along with data from external resources, with contributions from industry partners such as BidMachine, Coda, Kayzen, and Verve Group, as well as quotes from Chartboost and Timehop. Topics of the white paper include: - The traditional waterfall setup - The history of header bidding on desktop - The largest players in header bidding - When “header” bidding came to mobile - How in-app bidding works - In-depth analysis of the in-app bidding market and players - Looking ahead towards the future of in-app bidding - Partner quotes and industry insights Download a free high res version of the white paper here: https://pubnative.net/blog/white-paper-in-app-bidding/

1. DECONSTRUCTING
THE IN-APP BIDDING
LANDSCAPE
JULY 2020

2. 2DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
In-app bidding was one of the most talked about
topics in the AdTech space last year, with major
ad networks launching their own products, such
as IronSource’s LevelPlay or Chartboost’s Helium.
However, in-app bidding has been available for a
while before this with programmatic players launch-
ing solutions in 2018 - such as PubNative’s HyBid
and MoPub’s Advanced Bidding.
As mobile header bidding rapidly advances we’re
taking a step back to look at where it all began in
order to predict how it will advance in the coming
years.
HOW IT ALL STARTED:
HEADER BIDDING ON DESKTOP
WHEN “HEADER” BIDDING
CAME TO MOBILE
INDUSTRY QUOTES
& INSIGHTS
LOOKING AHEAD:
WHAT’S NEXT FOR IN-APP BIDDING?

3. HOW IT ALL STARTED:
HEADER BIDDING ON DESKTOP

4. 4DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Header bidding has its roots in the desktop world,
which allowed publishers to deprecate their old
monetization setups, such as the waterfall, and offer
equal access to their inventory to all monetization
partners/exchanges. This meant that with one (header)
unified auction running directly on the page, multiple
ad networks could be competing at the same time for
the same impressions.
The procedure maximizes the price publishers get
for their inventory. At the same time, it provides the
advertiser with better buying decision opportunities,
instead of the traditional waterfall method.
The name ‘header bidding’ originates from the
placement of the auction code (wrapper), which
makes simultaneous bidding possible, in the
web page header section of the HTML code.

5. 5DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Ad networks and publishers have been
dealing with the all-too-familiar inner
workings of managing ad waterfalls for
years. However, the waterfall model comes
with its own set of problems and is hardly
the most efficient model anymore.
But let’s go to the basics first and remind
ourselves how this model works. Traditional
waterfall is a bidding model where the ad
request cascades down from one ad network
to the next in sequential order until one can
fill the request.
BEFORE IN-APP BIDDING:
THE TRADITIONAL WATERFALL
This text was contributed by
SDK
DEMAND
PARTNER 1
$3
eCPM
No Bid
$2
eCPM
$2 Bid
DEMAND
PARTNER 2
Ad request
$1
eCPM
DEMAND
PARTNER 3
$3 Bid
MISSED
OPPORTUNITY

6. 6DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Inaccurate historical performance data
In a traditional waterfall, the ad networks’ positioning is formed
based on their historical eCPM performance. The inaccurate
data coming out if this made the subsequent bidding less
efficient, resulting in overlooked ad networks eager to pay
more and publishers left with predictable outcomes and lower
revenues.
Higher value ads held back
That particular factor encouraged capable ad networks to
switch to programmatic where in-app bidding is conducted
in real-time. Additionally, when all ad networks are able to
bid simultaneously, there is virtually no chance to overlook
the highest bids.
Lack of transparency
Lack of transparency plagued the mobile ad industry for years
and the waterfall model contributed to it. With the introduction
of first-price auction in-app bidding, it became more apparent
that auction participants received equal opportunities to offer
their bids and to be seen by publishers.
Ad latency
Ad latency issues are linked to how an ad request system is
set up within the waterfall—the more requests required before
it gets filled means the longer the latency. With real-time
bidding on the server-side, this issue is mitigated significantly.
Several major flaws
contributed to the
need to replace the
waterfall model with
a hybrid model or
to fully transition to
programmatic buying:
1 2
3 4
This text was contributed by

7. 7DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Since then, three major header bidding
players have come to dominate digital ad-
vertising auctions for desktop.AdExchanger
compared these three thoroughly; Prebid,
TAM (Amazon Publisher Services’ Transpar-
ent Ad Marketplace) and Google’s Open
Bidding - revealing some essential facts
and numbers.
Prebid first launched in 2015, with TAM and
Open Bidding following in 2016. Today they
are still market leaders for header bidding
on desktop. CafeMedia/AdThrive CSO
Paul Bannister uncovered some addition-
al crucial specs with his overview on the
three providers in his tweet on the Header
Bidding Wrapper Overview.
Market share between Open Bidding, Prebid and TAM.
THE LARGEST PLAYERS IN HEADER BIDDING
Prebid: 51.6% Open Bidding: 32.9% TAM: 15.5%
: 2%Per
According to the Roxot report with data collected in Q1 and Q2 2019,
Prebid has the largest market share out of the three header bidding
players.

8. 8DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Inspired by the aforementioned AdExchanger article comparing the major header bidding players, along
with Paul Bannister’s tweet, our team at PubNative analyzed the three header bidders, but this time from
a mobile in-app perspective.
Prebid is a transparent, open-source solution
initiated by AdTech pioneers in order to address
the challenges faced when implementing header
bidding. It originated with the idea of helping
publishers to integrate header bidding, improving
the Prebid products through collaboration. The
open-source code makes it possible for publishers to
run unbiased auctions and to set them up properly.
At the same time, the whole industry benefits from
both the open project as well as decreasing the
barriers of entry to header bidding technology
resulting, amongst others, in higher competition
and bid density in the auctions.
However, one of the challenges Prebid faces today
is not being primarily a mobile-first solution. This is
where mobile-first ad networks come in with their
custom-made in-app bidding products.
WHAT IS PREBID?
Name of the in-app
bidding solution
Which formats
are supported?
How many
partners are
available?
% of our
publishers
using the
solution
(PubNative data)
How easy it is to add new
partners?
Prebid
• Native
• Video
• Display
• Interstitial
50+ major
SSPs and
exchanges
3%
• Very easy (no update in
native code needed)
• Custom adapters
supported
Open bidding
(by Google, prev.
Exchange bidding)
• Display
• Video
20+ SSPs 6.50%
• Medium / difficult (need
to add yield group)
• Limited number of
partners
Amazon Publisher
Services’
Transparent Ad
Marketplace (TAM)
• Display
• Video
20+ SSPs 9.50%
• Easy
• Limited number of
partners (can turn
bidders off and on in real
time)

9. WHEN “HEADER” BIDDING
CAME TO MOBILE

10. 10DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
As mobile advertising continues its transition to
programmatic, several solutions started to evolve to
cover the growing need of flattening the waterfall, with a
name suitable for the mobile approach – In-App Bidding.
As in the desktop world, real-time parallel bidding helps
boost publishers’ ad revenue by maximizing auction
results and increasing efficiency. It also reduces latency,
which is a crucial factor for mobile users. At the same
time it eases operational overhead since monetization
managers no longer need to manage as many line items
and network placements in their mediation.
The positive results can be seen in various case studies,
such as this one by Facebook, where Rovio moved 92%
of their ad revenue to run on bidding. After implementing
in-app bidding Rovio could devote operational resourc-
es to other areas, instead of maintaining the manually
operated waterfall, and at the same time ensure higher
revenues.
In another case study, Melsoft could spend more time on
user acquisition after switching from waterfall to bidding,
which in turn helped them to raise their ad monetization
opportunities and grow their business. Furthermore,
FUN-GI reported that after implementing bidding and
relying less on the manual waterfall, the studio could
use their time more for developing new games and
expanding their team.
WHEN “HEADER” BIDDING CAME TO MOBILE
Boosting
publishers’
ad revenue
Maximizing
auction
results
Increasing
efficiency

11. 11DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
The Hybrid Setup
The hybrid model is a fusion between the
traditional waterfall and in-app bidding
technology. These complement each other
by initiating the open bidding auctions in
the first step, and in the second step by
going through the waterfall, to finally let
the highest bidder win the whole auction
and the creative be served within the
publisher’s ad placement.
The process of in-app bidding begins with an ad request being
sent to the server and a real-time auction then takes place be-
tween the bidding demand sources. In contrast to the tradition-
al (sequential) waterfall, in a parallel bidding auction every ad
network gets to compete at the same time, with the highest bid
winning.
This way, all bids are considered and you don’t risk missing out
on a potentially higher bid and hence more revenue. The winning
bid is finally served in the publisher’s ad space. The auction
takes place server-side and can be combined with a client-side
waterfall, with that setup being called a hybrid auction.
HOW IN-APP
BIDDING
WORKS
Publisher’s
Ad server
PubNative
Super
Auction
MoPub
$6 Bid
Ad
Network1
$5 Bid
AD
SERVER SIDE CLIENT SIDE
No Bid
DEMAND
PARTNER 3
DEMAND
PARTNER 1
$6 Bid
EXCHANGE 1
$5 Bid
Exchange 1
Auction
DSP A: $5 Bid
DSP B: $4 Bid
DSP C: $3 Bid
$7 Bid
DEMAND
PARTNER 2
Hybid SDK
$7 Bid
Maximum
Bid
Winning
Bid

12. 12DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Ad network name
In-app bidding
product name
Supported ad
formats
Bidding ad
sources
Hybrid/server
side/client
side auctions
AerServ/InMobi OpenAuction
• Banner
• Native
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
No info
available
Server-side
Amazon TAM
• Display
• Video
20+ Server-side
AOL/Verizon Smart Yield
• Banner
• Native
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
No info
available
Hybrid
AppLovin MAX
• Banner
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
3
No info
available
Appodeal BidMachine All major ad formats 14+ Hybrid
Chartboost Helium
• Banner
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
4
No info
available
Fyber FairBid
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
5
No info
available
Google Open Bidding
• Display
• Video
20+ Server side
IronSource LevelPlay
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
4
No info
available
In-app bidding spend grew 20% quarter on quarter in Q3
2019, according to PubMatic’s report. Of those who already
have in-app bidding or plan to implement it in the future,
56% say it leads to greater transparency into bid value,
better yield management and higher revenue. According to
InMobi’s report, in 2019 38% of app publishers use in-app
bidding, which is up from 31% the year before.
However, the number is constantly rising as new in-app
bidding solutions have been launched by some major
AdTech companies in the last couple of months. Together
with PubNative’s HyBid, we have gathered some of them
together. To the right you can find a more detailed overview.
THE IN-APP BIDDING
MARKET

13. 13DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Ad network name
In-app bidding
product name
Supported ad
formats
Bidding ad
sources
Hybrid/server
side/client
side auctions
Mintegral HiBid
• Banner
• Native
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
2 Hybrid
MoPub Advanced Bidding
• Banner
• Native
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
6
No info
available
OpenX OpenX Bidder
• Banner
• Interstitials
No info
available
No info
available
Prebid Prebid Mobile
• Banner
• Native
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
Many major
SSPs and
exchanges
Hybrid
PubMatic OpenBid
• Display
• Native
• Video
8 Server-side
PubNative HyBid
• Banner
• Video
• Interstitials
10+ Hybrid
Tapjoy/Tapdaq Header Bidding
• Rewarded Video
• Interstitials
9 Hybrid
Timehop Nimbus
• Banner
• Native
• Video
• Interstitials
10 Hybrid
Products
Most in-app bidding products have their own names, like Helium
by Chartboost or MAX by AppLovin. With strong mobile growth
in APAC, Mintegral released parallel bidding last year, being the
first Chinese AdTech company to enter this space.
Bidding ad sources
The in-app bidding solutions on the table are new on the market
and most of them are not finished products, but are rather being
further developed as more bidding ad networks are added.
For instance, LevelPlay by IronSource has only four partners
integrated in the unified auction. Advanced Bidding by MoPub
has six, FairBid by Fyber has five and Tapjoy has nine. However,
they are all announcing that they are implementing more bidding
ad sources soon and it is left to be seen how fast the progress
will be.
1
2

14. 14DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Formats
When it comes to ad formats, display ads
are the most common format traded within
in-app bidding auctions, but rewarded video
has been getting particular focus recently
from the major mobile ad networks as they
move into this space. The gap between
different ad units is driven by the different
types of advertisers (games or brands) and
publishers (apps or games) who use different
monetization stacks (programmatic vs ad
networks).
Facebook Audience Network
Additionally, one of the participants that has
always been at the forefront of in-app bidding
advancement is Facebook. Although they
are not positioned as service or technology
providers, they are heavily involved through
their Audience Network Partner Program,
which allows publishers to include ads from
Facebook’s network in the auctions. By using
the Audience Network SDK to render the
ads, publishers are able to monetize through
Facebook’s integrated bidding partners.
Prebid Mobile
Last but not least, Prebid Mobile - though
a late entrant to the market - has been
continuously advancing in the last year
and is committed to grow even further in
2020. As members of the Prebid Mobile
committee, PubNative believes that it is
essential to coin this initiative for an open and
community-driven ecosystem. Read more
about PubNative’s contribution to Prebid
Mobile here.
3 4 5

15. LOOKING AHEAD:
WHAT’S NEXT FOR IN-APP BIDDING?

16. 16DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
The transition from waterfall-based logic
to full open bidding auctions is not going
to occur overnight. As the whole AdTech
ecosystem is moving into the parallel
bidding era, so far most networks only
have three or four partners participating
in in-app bidding, like Chartboost’s Helium
for instance, who has four or AppLovin’s
MAX who has three. In the current state
of development, the ad space in the
publisher’s app first goes through the
open auction, with the participating ad
networks.
However, since only a few networks are
integrated into the open auction, the ad
opportunity is not maximized. In order to
bridge any revenue gap, the unfilled ad
space is then sent through the waterfall
setup, which has considerably more
participating ad networks and hence
increases the chances of returning an
ad. One other point to add is that most
of the in-app bidding solutions focus
on particular formats, which means
TRANSITION PERIOD
publishers do need to choose from the
available solutions (bidding or waterfall)
to maximize their yield.
This status quo means that most
solutions are not yet purely in-app bidding
technologies but compensate with the
waterfall component. As more partners
are being added to open auctions, in-app
bidding platforms will deliver more fill and
increased revenues.
For now and as long as parallel bidding
products are still being developed, the
process will remain a fusion between
in-app bidding and waterfall.
Waterfall
PAST
FUTURE
PRESENT
In-App
Bidding
Hybrid

17. 17DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
Mobile header bidding, or in-app bidding, is on it’s way to becoming standard practice. However,
the newly released products are still being further developed and the market for in-app bidding
continues to unfold. According to PubMatic, there is considerable room for in-app advertising
spend to grow in 2020. Reports and case studies on in-app header bidding show a 30% growth
and some even report up to 45% increase in publishers’ARPDAU after switching to parallel bidding.
We can expect to see shifts in terms of market share between the existing players as their products
evolve. With a still maturing landscape, some solutions may focus on adding value through different
formats (playables, rewarded video), or geos (US, LATAM, EU, APAC), driven by type of advertisers
and publishers.
In-app bidding will disrupt the current state of the
digital advertising market as its usage accelerates.
It’s a disruptive change that will rebalance the value
distribution, making the ecosystem more transparent
and increasingly competitive. The unified auction helps
publishers to maximize their ad revenues through a
more transparent, fair and open competition.
As the market becomes more saturated for most
publishers, especially in the mobile games sector, it
becomes crucial to extract as much as possible from
each advertising dollar. In the long term and as the
technology advances, in-app bidding would additionally
lead to cutting out the middlemen within the digital
advertising landscape. In the short term, we can expect
increased CPM and fill rates for publishers, lower
margins for intermediaries and more transparency
for buyers - overall already on a good way to a more
democratized mobile AdTech ecosystem, from which
everybody profits proportionally to the value they bring.
THE FUTURE OF IN-APP BIDDING
Waterfall
Revenue
Hybrid
Revenue
In-App Bidding
Revenue

18. 18DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
INDUSTRY QUOTES
FROM PARTNERS
“The role of a bidding in-app environment is crucial for any developer
to maximize their revenue opportunity. To me, waterfall solutions
are very legacy which typically sees a lot of money left on the table.
I’ve spoken to other peer publishers who claim that they’re experts
in optimizing, prioritizing the hierarchy and adjusting CPM based on
historical trends. However, all the modifications and improvements
are always reactive instead of proactive meaning, you’ve already
lost revenue in order to understand a change is required to be made.
With bidding, each demand partner has an equal shot of buying that
inventory and you can rest easy knowing you’re always getting the
highest price for any given opportunity. If you’re doing it right, you’ll
diversify your demand, increase eCPM, fill % and most importantly,
increase your bottom line.“
David Leviev,
VP Programmatic Product Development at Timehop
“At Chartboost, we strongly believe in the positive impact of unified
auctions on the mobile app monetization landscape. In-app bidding
brings transparency and fairness to the advertising industry,
values that are very much needed today. And most importantly, it
helps mobile app publishers make more money by auctioning out
programmatically their inventory across competitive advertising
partners, removing the overhead of manual settings”.
Pepe Agell,
Co-CEO and CSO at Chartboost

19. 19DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
ON IN-APP BIDDING
- BY PUBLISHER CODA
We have implemented in-app bidding at Coda during the first month of our first game’s
launch: Rope Rescue. Our small team wanted to focus on the things that mattered for
the developers instead of the cumbersome work of optimising waterfalls. It’s been a year
since then. We’re still just at the beginning of a long journey. Here are some challenges
that we have faced (and are overcoming with the help of our partners steadily).
We want the machines to do
the hard work and create the
fair market that we yearn to
have in mobile advertising
(read more about machine
learning here.) It’s a big shift
from how things have been
and the setbacks should
not shake our trust in the
technologies we build together
but only grow our vigilance on
persisting to get incremental
and continuous improvements.
In-App bidding is an inevitable
direction the market’s taking.
We all have a responsibility to
make it work for the industry.
1
2
3
4
5
6
“The Hybrid” Setup: When waterfall and in-app bidding work hand in
hand, it’s not quite clear nor easy to understand the dynamics even
for the most seasoned monetisation experts. Lack of absolute clarity
makes it difficult to keep being engaged in the integration process.
It’s Still not Plug & Play: Integration requires some important changes
on the client-side and beta testing takes some time for the teams to
have confident enough data. Furthermore, the bidders didn’t seem
to be working as expected in the beginning, shaking our trust on a
product that is very promising and is highly anticipated. Initially 2 of the
3 partners we worked with underperformed considering the ARPDAU.
Waterfall Still Works Well: Strong partners kept maintaining and
strengthening their waterfall-based products. Those platforms are
still performing really well to this day, specifically in our industry. The
fill rates are acceptable. Waterfall building and sustaining tools keep
improving. There hasn’t seemed to be much of an incentive to use
in-app bidding.
In-app bidding offers less transparency and control over
impression values (eCPM). The ad networks are not shar-
ing the auction-based data in a comparable detail as for the
waterfall placements.
In-app bidding uses the whole spectrum of the real-time
bidding freedom against the waterfall, as it should do. However,
as a smarter and more flexible real-time system, it beats the
classical waterfall not at its best but where the waterfall
is weaker. The publisher has quite little control to maximise
the yield.
Not enough competition: Companies took sides and didn’t let
the others use their bidders. It seems like none of the products in
the market includes enough partners to incentivize this change.
This text was contributed
by

20. 20DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
HOW IN-APP BIDDING AFFECTS
THE DEMAND SIDE
- BY KAYZEN
For ad buyers, in-app header bidding can overall be
considered as a positive development. However, the
view differs depending on which tech stack and partners
buyers funnel their ad spend through. Below are a few
considerations and elaborations around how in-app header
bidding affects buyers and what it means for the market
as a whole.
Real-time pricing impression level vs historical CPMs bulk based pricing
Ad networks’ tech stack is not built to price each impression with an accurate value. Instead, an ad network ranks
campaigns in a certain order of delivery based on historical performance. Think about this as a waterfall within
the ad network’s delivery engine (not to be confused with the publisher waterfall). In contrast, RTB buyers price
each single impression with a specific value. In the currently still predominant setup of publisher waterfalls, the
ad network can “cherry pick” the better impressions if it has a high position on the waterfall. This leads to higher
eCPMs which will mean the publisher will keep positioning the ad network on the higher waterfall position and
RTB buyers may just get a look at the impression, after an ad network has already decided not to bid. You can
see already how this creates a market bias and sub optimal monetization for publishers.
With in-app header bidding, everyone gets “equal access” to inventory, and hence RTB buyers can outprice ad
networks for high value impressions, since their systems are better built to understand the true value of a single
impression and respond with a bid in real time.
1st Price auctions
Today, already about 27% of auctions sent to Kayzen
by the 25 exchanges the bidder is connected to are
transacted on 1st price. With the transition to in-app
header bidding, more and more inventory gets transacted
on 1st price auctions. While in-app header bidding does
not necessarily require an auction to be on 1st price, it
currently looks like gradually most sizable exchanges will
transition to 1st price auctions over the next 12 months.
This will impact RTB buyers, who are used mostly to
transact on 2nd price auctions as of today and they will
have to adjust their buying algorithms to account for the
auction type.
This text was
contributed by
If you are interested to learn more about how 1st price
auctions will affect buyers, read this article.

21. 21DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
The role of walled gardens
Today, many publishers have walled gardens monetization SDKs on
top of their waterfall. This means walled gardens can “cherry pick”
impressions on a first look and deliver higher CPMs thereby maintaining
their high position on the publisher waterfall. You can see how this
leads to a virtuous circle, where having a high position on the waterfall
will likely lead to maintaining a high position in the future. Hence, it
will be interesting to observe if the market share of walled gardens will
decline with the further adoption of in-app header bidding. This could
be one of the reasons, why in particular google is trying to avoid the
market moving there.
Flattening the playing field
Overall, a higher adoption of in-app header bidding should lead to
reduced market bias, increased competition and a more liquid and
efficient ecosystem overall. Economic theory teaches us that the
more efficient a market is, the lower the margins tend to be and the
less money “middle men” make. This is probably the biggest positive
news for buyers (and sellers alike). In-app header bidding will help to
flatten the playing field and allow buyers to get more of their money
go to working media instead of middle men.
Afterthought: Apple’s iOS announcement
and the role of IDFA
One thing to watch will be how the future of the IDFA, and
unique identifiers in general, will affect the transition to in-app
header bidding. One of the key motivations for publishers to
move to in-app header bidding is to enable more competition
for premium impressions. The data we see at Kayzen tell us
that the value a buyer ends up bidding on the same placement
can vary as much as by a factor of 100x depending on the
specific user device ID. Hence, two impressions who seem to
look alike might have a very different value depending on the
buyers’ information about that user. If buyers are not able to
identify highest value users anymore (because of the lack of
unique identifiers), then the volatility bids may become smaller,
which might lead to less premium paid for specific impressions.
This may lead to a lower than expected increase in ARPDAU
for publishers when they move from a static waterfall to in-app
header bidding.
This text was
contributed by

22. 22DECONSTRUCTING THE IN-APP BIDDING LANDSCAPE
IN-APP BIDDING
FROM A BRAND/LOCATION-
CONTEXT PERSPECTIVE
- BY VERVE GROUP
From a Fortune 500 brand perspective, in-app bidding gives the
opportunity to always find the right audience across all supply sources.
When the audience data is paired with a unified auction, it can empower
significantly better bidding strategies, securing the best impressions
needed to reach advertisers KPIs - be it viewability, CTR or other
engagement metrics. With the unified auction, we get access to unique
inventory pockets otherwise hidden somewhere in the waterfall. It also
reduces the duplicated inventory and auctions and helps optimize our
supply paths.
With transparent and open auctions, in-app bidding democratizes
access to supply and at the same time maximizing access to most
premium bids/demand.
Pairing advertisers’ needs and KPIs with our location-context audiences,
allows us to fastly become a top demand partner for most publishers
we connect via in-app bidding - most frequently via Amazon TAM, but
also via PubNative’s HyBid solution. When we have a brand with a new
campaign offering high CPMs rates, in-app bidding makes it possible
for publishers to take advantage of that offer immediately. With the
waterfall setup on the other hand, we would have had to negotiate
premium positions with the publishers and have them adjust their
waterfall - this manual process being costly and inefficient (in terms
of opportunity cost) on both ends.
This text was
contributed by

23. About PubNative
PubNative, now part of Verve Group, is a mobile publisher platform and programmatic
ad exchange, providing advanced monetization solutions for mobile app developers.
With its proprietary cross-format optimization technology and mobile in-app bidding
solution, PubNative enables mobile publishers to maximize their programmatic
advertising revenue via flexible integrations (API, SDK, JavaScript). The company
is headquartered in Berlin with satellite offices in Beijing and Seoul.
About This White Paper
This white paper is based on internal data and research by PubNative as well as
data from external resources. All the charts and tables are made by PubNative,
based on the results from our research.
The section on “Before header bidding: the traditional waterfall” on pages 4 and 5
were exclusively written by BidMachine for this white paper. Section “On in-app
bidding - by publisher Coda” was exclusively written by the publisher platform Coda.
Section “How in-app bidding affects the demand side - by Kayzen” was exclusively
written by the DSP Kayzen. The section on “In-app bidding from a brand/location-
context perspective” was written by the data-first brand performance ad platform
Verve Group. Quote-contributors are Chartboost and Timehop.
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