This is intended as a quick and dirty guide to header bidding, for publishers interested in exploring or optimizing a header bidding stack.

Frameworks

Frameworks break down into two categories, vendor-locked and open source.

Prebid.js is the dominant framework due to AppNexus' opensourcing of the code and the amount of adapters available to publishers wishing to try new adapters quickly.

Terminology

Client-side adapters: "Client-side" adapters are those that work by a javascript configuration file to be called by the end user, when their browser loads a page.

Essentially, the auction for that impression is conducted with all the partners utilizing a direct connect to that user and deciding whether to bid.

Once they decide, the "yes" bids go to the Prebid script and are compared, with the highest "1st price" bid winning. Once that bid is accepted, the auction is cleared out at the bid price and the line item matching that bidder is called in DFP and the creative is loaded.

Server Side: "Server Side" header bidding is a scenario where the publisher configures prebid to make one call to an auction server of their choosing, which conducts the auction with connected Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) and returns a bid to the Prebid script.

The benefit is that it reduces the load on the user's browser (no longer do they have to make multiple concurrent connections to heavy/slow DSP scripts) and also makes it more simpler to connect many more DSPs to the auction that may or may not be compatible with Prebid itself.

More to come...