Prebid.org Celebrates 3 Year Anniversary Milestone; Announced Formation of New CTV-OTT and Taxonomy Task Forces

Independent organization has grown to more than 60 members committed to developing fair and unified auction tools and practices, as core software tool Prebid.js turns 5

NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES — Prebid.org, the organization that oversees open source Prebid programmatic advertising solutions, celebrates its 3 year anniversary as well as the 5 year anniversary of Prebid.js. The growth and evolution of the independent organization demonstrates the enthusiasm behind open-source, community-driven tools and practices for the ad tech industry. As evidence of Prebid’s success and continued growth, there are more than 20,000 live implementations, over 650 engineering contributors, 250+ approved bid adapters and 13 user ID modules.

.@Prebidjs celebrates its 5 year anniversary as well as the formation of new CTV-OTT and Taxonomy Task Forces.

Prebid.org is an industry-wide initiative supported by a diverse group of over 60 members, representing exchanges, publishers, buyers and third-party developers dedicated to creating standardized solutions for programmatic advertising. Prebid.org leader member companies include Index Exchange, Magnite, MediaMath, OpenX, PubMatic, SpotX, The Trade Desk, and Xandr. Prebid.org manages the open source projects Prebid.js, Prebid Mobile, and Prebid Server, as well as projects focused on Identity, Video and Native.

The formation of new Task Forces on CTV-OTT and Taxonomy signals the continued growth of the organization and its expanding charter. The CTV-OTT task force will extend Prebid’s video work to handle long-form video content, and will focus on issues such as Unified auctions, support for ad pods, competitive separation and other key features. The Taxonomy working group will seek to establish standards for log file transparency audits, content categories, and audiences.

“Prebid.org was established to promote fair, transparent and efficient header bidding and over the past three years, it has both stayed true to this goal and has grown well beyond it,” said Tom Kershaw, Chairman of Prebid.org. “As the programmatic industry continues to mature, Prebid.org will continue to play an important role in fostering collaboration and driving forward the open source and community-driven projects that are needed to solve the challenges within our industry.”

While Prebid.org was initially created to help publishers better manage header bidding, its scope and scale has enabled it to evolve into an industry leading organization that supports all sides of the industry in various capacities. Examples of more recent focus areas for Prebid include identity, as increased regulation and the decline of cookies present challenges to the advertising ecosystem, as well as CTV, as advertiser interest is spurring the need for better standards and more advanced programmatic tools created specifically for long-form video environments.

“The continued growth of digital advertising and programmatic is dependent on trust and transparency that will come from agreed-upon standards and practices,” said Michael Richardson, Prebid.org Board Member. “What started as a code set for header bidding has grown to be a stabilizing force in our industry. Prebid.org has made impressive progress in the past three years and I look forward to seeing what the organization and its members accomplish next.”

“Prebid.org has shown the importance of the open internet coming together to create open source tools that improve digital advertising,” said Dave Pickles, Prebid.org Board Member as well as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of The Trade Desk. “Transparent marketplaces that adhere to the same standards and guidelines improve the web experience for advertisers, publishers and consumers. We look forward to continued collaboration as the internet and the future of media evolves.”

Paul Bannister, Chief Strategy Officer of CafeMedia, added, “It’s been exciting to watch the growth of Prebid.org over the years, from a simple technology platform to an industry-leading organization. Prebid has been critical in building a more competitive ecosystem that supports publishers of all sizes, and will continue to strengthen the open web in the future. It’s been an honor for CafeMedia to join the board of Prebid.org and help guide the direction of our industry through these transformative times.”

A collaborative effort of industry partners, Prebid.org is open to all parties advocating for unbiased and efficient monetization solutions and a digital advertising ecosystem that thrives through fair competition.

About Prebid.org

Formed in September of 2017, Prebid.org is an independent organization designed to ensure and promote fair, transparent, and efficient header bidding across the industry. Funded by dues-paying members, it manages the open source projects Prebid.js, Prebid Mobile, Prebid Server, Prebid Video, Prebid Native, and others. Prebid.org is open to all companies who are part of the programmatic ecosystem, from ad tech vendors to publishers and others. We believe that, working together, we can drive standardized, transparent technology for advertising that will make it easier for buyers and sellers to transact at scale in a fully programmatic ecosystem.