HOLLYWOOD — In the new programmatic buzzword of “header bidding”, publishers no longer have to run auctions for ad buys sequentially; they can audition multiple demand sources simultaneously, to get the highest price.

The practice has been around a few years, but spent 2016 bedding in. In 2017, however, header bidding is changing.

No longer confined as a “client-side” technology (one which runs on a consumer’s web browser and can, therefore, cause heavy load), header bidding is also now moving to the server side.

“We’re quickly entering header 2.0,” says Index Exchange partner development SVP Alex Gardner. “Whereas, once, it was a client-side integration, we’re now moving to a place where publishers are going to have a lot more choice as to how they integrate additional bidders or demand sources – be it client or server side.”

Index Exchange is a real-time programmatic ad exchange launched by Casale Media.

It is one of the a-tech vendors that offers a header bidding solution.

AppNexus and Index Exchange already had their own server-side header bidding offerings, and already had a partnership on conventional header bidding.

In an extended integration just announced between the pair works with existing header bidding wrapper software, but the pair say the latest version is more like real-time bidding, with auctions taking place on their servers as opposed to in the publisher customer’s header.

This video is part of a series produced at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. Beet.TV’s coverage of this event is sponsored by Index Exchange. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.