Maximize every impression with unified auctions powered by Prebid.js and server-side bidding. Our header bidding stack drives fierce competition among demand partners to unlock your true revenue potential.
Header bidding asks every demand partner for a bid at the same time, before the ad server is called, instead of offering the impression to one network after another in a waterfall. The best header bid then competes in the ad server's first-price auction. HBDR's implementation leverages Prebid.js — the industry-standard open-source framework — combined with our proprietary server-side bidding infrastructure to ensure every impression is sold at the highest possible price.
Our unified auction engine processes bids from 65+ demand sources in under 100 milliseconds, eliminating latency concerns while creating genuine competition for every ad slot. Publishers using HBDR's header bidding solution can see CPM uplift of up to 50% compared to traditional waterfall setups.
We deploy a hybrid architecture that combines the transparency of client-side auctions with the speed and scale of server-to-server connections.
Our optimized Prebid.js wrapper runs directly in the browser, enabling full auction transparency. We configure bid adapters for each demand partner, implement smart timeout management, and utilize price granularity settings tailored to your inventory. Cookie-based targeting works only where browsers allow it: Chrome still offers third-party cookies, while Safari blocks them all by default, so Prebid's User ID modules and first-party data carry targeting there.
Our Prebid Server infrastructure handles high-volume server-to-server connections, dramatically reducing page latency. This enables more demand partners to participate without impacting user experience or Core Web Vitals scores. Server-side bidders recognise users through cookie syncing or IDs passed from the page, and the server call still has to return inside the page's auction timeout.
Every feature designed to maximize yield and simplify operations.
AI-driven floor prices that adapt in real time to market conditions, bid density, and historical performance to maximize CPMs.
Intelligent ad refresh cycles that maximize viewable impressions without sacrificing user experience or violating demand partner policies.
Bid-level reporting across every demand partner, ad unit, device, and geography with real-time dashboards and automated alerting.
Run controlled experiments on bidder configurations, timeout settings, and floor prices with statistical significance tracking.
Comprehensive blocklists and category filters keep unwanted advertisers and creatives off your pages. ads.txt and sellers.json do a different job: they declare which companies are authorized to sell your inventory, which protects your revenue from spoofed supply.
Access 65+ demand sources including Google AdX, Amazon TAM, Index Exchange, OpenX, and PubMatic from a single integration.
Most header bidding revenue is won or lost in configuration, not in the number of bidders.
The time Prebid waits for bids before it calls the ad server. Too short and bids miss the auction; too long and the ad server call is delayed until people leave the page. Set the Prebid Server timeout to 50–75% of the auction timeout so server bids get back in time, and use analytics to find the bidders that time out, by region.
Classic setups pass the bid as a key-value that matches price-priority line items, so the price is rounded to your granularity buckets. On Ad Manager 360, header bidding trafficking for the Prebid wrapper reads true bid values instead and reports bids across channels; it supports web display traffic only.
Ad Manager has run unified first-price auctions since 2019, so a winning bid pays what it bid. Floors, timeouts and bidder choice therefore move revenue directly: test one change at a time and compare revenue per page, not CPM alone.
Sources: Prebid.org, Prebid Timeouts, Price Granularity, Prebid Server overview and User ID module; Google Ad Manager Help, Header bidding trafficking with the Prebid wrapper; Google Ad Manager blog, first-price auctions (5 September 2019); Google, Update on Plans for Privacy Sandbox Technologies (17 October 2025); WebKit, Tracking Prevention; IAB Tech Lab, ads.txt.
HBDR has served ads since 2015 for publishers on the web, in apps and on connected TV.