Campaign Crash Course: What is header bidding?

Welcome back to Campaign Asia-Pacific's Crash Course learning series, in which you will learn valuable lessons and practical business tips on trending and essential topics from industry experts in just five minutes. Think of it as a mini mini MBA, if you will.

Lessons will cover the breadth of the marcomms industry, including technology, creative, media, strategy, leadership, diversity and inclusion and more. We'll start off by introducing you to larger topics and delve deeper into specific elements in the future. This series is designed to be useful to C-suite executives as well as those just starting out in their careers.

The 14th lesson in the Crash Course series delves into the cryptic world of programmatic buying to illustrate the difference between the traditional 'waterfall' process that publishers use to serve an ad versus the newer 'header bidding' technique. If these terms mean nothing to you yet, don't be dismayed—this lesson provides a visual breakdown of how programmatic auctions work and the key differences between the two methods.

In this lesson you will learn:

• How the traditional 'waterfall' method of programmatic buying works.
• How publishers set up a 'waterfall'.
• Why there is a need for a different approach.
• How header bidding is set up.
• What the benefits of header bidding are.

Your teacher

Marcus Pousette is the country manager of Southeast Asia, Greater China and Korea at sell-side adtech firm PubMatic. Pousette has been with the firm for nearly six years, first joining in 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden to run publisher sales for Northern Europe. He relocated to Singapore in 2018 as director of publisher development, and was promoted to his current role in April this year.

Pousette has more than 10 years of experience in the digital advertising industry covering video adtech and performance businesses.

The quiz

After you watch the above video, test your knowledge of header bidding with this quiz: