Header bidding trafficking

Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.

In a general sense, header bidding is a system that collects programmatic bids on the publisher’s webpage before making the ad request to Ad Manager.

In Ad Manager, header bidding trafficking is a feature that is designed to:

• Simplify setting up header bidding in Ad Manager.
• Improve header bidding reporting with consolidated and more accurate reporting across all demand channels.
• Potentially improve header bidding performance with more granular bidding (using true bid values instead of Price Priority line items).

Requirements

To use header bidding trafficking, you must:

• Use the Prebid wrapper with a "standard implementation".
• Use Google Publisher Tag (GPT) on your website.
• Target the Banner ad format.
• Target the Web inventory type.

Additional functionality is being considered for future releases.

Tagging

No tagging changes are required. GPT will collect the necessary data from your Prebid wrapper directly.

Publishers should continue to use existing Prebid header bidding wrappers provided by partners with which they have an existing direct relationship. Only web display traffic is supported.

Enable header bidding for an ad network

When you set up header bidding trafficking, you can begin trafficking right away, or you can run an experiment to understand the potential impact.

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Delivery, then Bidders.
3. Click Go to Header bidding.
4. Click Get started to enable Prebid for the network.
   This step only needs to be done once. 
5. Review each detected bidder. For each bidder, there are three configuration options:
   1. Enable SafeFrame: When enabled, ads returned by the bidder will render inside of a SafeFrame. Bidders may vary in their compatibility with SafeFrame.
   2. Enable optimized Private Auction deals: When enabled, bids that include a deal ID will enter the auction at the optimized Private Auction priority. If disabled, such bids will continue to work with any relevant line items in your network.
   3. Allow ads on child-directed requests: When enabled, the associated bidder’s ads may show on inventory that is classified in Ad Manager as child-directed.
6. Click Continue.
7. On the next page, decide if you want to run an experiment to understand the effects of using header bidding trafficking.
   1. If you want to immediately traffic Prebid across your entire network through header bidding trafficking, select Run Prebid on entire network.
   2. If you want to run an experiment, click Run experiment.
      1. Enter a unique name for your experiment.
      2. Select the time period you'd like to run the experiment.
      3. Select the traffic allocation as a percent of total traffic. A random sample of eligible traffic targeting the allocation entered will experiment with the new feature, while the rest of the traffic will continue using the current setup in your network (should one exist).
8. Click Finish.

Header bidding reporting

Historical reporting helps you understand how header bidding is performing.

• Use the Bidder dimension to see performance by exchange.
• Add the Demand Channel dimension to see whether buyers accessed your inventory through header bidding (the Demand Channel dimension has a value of “Header bidding”).

Using protections with header bidding

You can prevent header bidding from bypassing line items according to your preferences by applying a protection, selecting the new header bidding demand source, and then selecting appropriate targeting.

Supported bidders

To review supported bidders for header bidding trafficking, check the following list. Note that the list may not be exhaustive, as we continue adding support for new bidders. If you have questions about a bidder not on the list, you can contact your account manager.