Prebid, the industry’s open source header-bidding wrapper, is not easy to implement and configure.
Publishers have to constantly update code, fiddle with it to make sure it works with all of their supply-side platforms, create default settings and timeouts and then test that the whole shebang is functioning properly.
While that’s doable for a large publisher with dedicated engineering and ad ops teams, it’s a heavy lift for smaller pubs.
Bidscape is designed to automate some of the complexities of Prebid to help small and mid-size publishers get the most out of the product in a transparent way.
Despite the heavy lift, Prebid is appealing because it’s independent and open source, thereby allowing publishers to move away from walled garden solutions, such as Amazon Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) and Google Exchange Bidding. And, because it’s so configurable, Prebid gives publishers more control over how they operate their auctions and monetize their sites.
But the managed service solutions in market that aim to solve Prebid implementation complexities for smaller publishers tend to be opaque.
Bidscape allows you to play around with the configuration and run tests yourself. The platform bundles and automates Prebid configurations to make them easy to set up and test on an ongoing basis. It also ensures publishers always have the most recent version of Prebid’s code, which is constantly being changed.
Bidscape offers implementation support and ongoing performance reviews depending on the size of a publisher’s engineering teams.
The company is building more automation into Bidscape and creating new features, like layout optimization and ad mediation.
Bidscape also offers server-side, client-side and hybrid Prebid implementations based on a publisher’s strategy. Company charges an SaaS fee to operate Bidscape rather than a percentage of media spend, which is how most Prebid managed service providers charge.