There's now a ridiculous number of companies competing in the hottest area of ad tech
Summary
Essentially, header bidding is a means by which publishers can bring in more ad demand by democratizing the buying process. A longstanding complaint in web publishing has been that as digital advertising has become more data driven and automated — i.e. “programmatic” — Google had maintained an advantaged position. And publishers worried that they weren’t always getting the best price for their ads, because the system was rigged to favour Google. Thus, the explosion in popularity of header bidding has lead to a gold rush, or at least a lot of companies hoping to get in on one. Though most publishers will only employ five to 10 header bidding partners, Yieldbot has identified over 70 in the market, though some are proving more popular than others.