Yieldbird is part of the Agora Group, whose parent company, Agora S.A., is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (GPW). That status is more than a line on a website. It brings a level of oversight, financial transparency, and external accountability that private vendors are not required to match. Below we break down what this status actually means for the people who rely on us.

What a public company ad tech partner means

A private ad tech vendor can operate with very little outside visibility. You take their word for their financial health, their controls, and their stability. A listed company operates under a different set of rules.

Once a company lists on a regulated exchange, it accepts ongoing obligations that touch almost every part of how it reports on itself. These obligations exist to protect investors, but they create a useful side effect for clients: far more of the company becomes visible and verifiable from the outside.

For a publicly listed business, three things are true that are rarely true for private vendors:

• The company is subject to financial market regulation and supervision, with formal disclosure requirements.
• Its financial statements are audited regularly by independent external auditors.
• Key financial information is published and available for public review, not hidden behind a sales pitch.

Each of these points has a direct, practical benefit for you. Let us look at them one at a time.

Stronger regulatory oversight

A listed company on a regulated exchange answers to a financial market regulator. In Poland, that role is held by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF).

This supervision adds a layer of scrutiny that private companies simply do not face. Reporting obligations, disclosure rules, and conduct standards are not optional. They are enforced. For you, that means the company you work with is held to external standards rather than only to its own internal promises.

Regulatory oversight does not eliminate every risk. No framework does. What it does is reduce the space for unreported problems to grow quietly out of sight, because a listed company is required to disclose material information on a defined schedule. You can read more about how Poland supervises listed issuers on the Polish Financial Supervision Authority website.

Regular audits by independent firms

Listing publicly also means submitting to regular, thorough audits by independent external auditors. These are not internal reviews written by the same people who run the business. They are conducted by leading international audit firms whose own reputation depends on getting the assessment right.

An external audit examines whether the financial statements give a true and fair view of the company’s position. That process matters to you for a few reasons:

• It provides independent confirmation of the numbers, rather than self-reported figures.
• It happens on a recurring basis, so the picture stays current instead of going stale.
• It is performed by firms with the expertise and the incentive to flag problems honestly.

For a publisher or advertiser evaluating a long-term partner, recurring independent audits are one of the clearest signals that a company’s stated financial health holds up under scrutiny.

Financial transparency you can verify

Perhaps the most practical benefit of working with a public company ad tech partner is that you do not have to take its stability on faith. Key financial information is published and open to review. You can look at it. So can analysts, journalists, and your own finance team.

This transparency is the opposite of the private-vendor model, where solvency questions are answered with marketing language and a confident tone. With a listed business, the financial backing is documented and visible. That does not make a company immune to challenges, but it does make it very difficult for serious solvency problems to stay hidden, because the disclosures are out there for anyone to examine.

In a market where ad tech vendors come and go, that kind of visible, verifiable financial footing is worth a great deal. It is one of the reasons publishers can build on the Yieldbird Platform with confidence about who stands behind it. You can read more about how listed companies are required to disclose information through the GPW disclosure of information rules.

Why this matters for your business

Stability in your partners is not an abstract nicety. The companies in your ad stack handle real revenue and real data, often for years. If one of them quietly runs into trouble, the disruption lands on you.

The good news is that you do not have to guess. With a listed partner, regulatory supervision, independent audits, and transparent financial reporting do a lot of that homework for you, and that is a much better starting point than relying solely on the assurances of a private technology provider. If you want to see what that backing supports day to day, explore the rest of the Yieldbird Research Hub.

Key takeaways

• Choosing a public company ad tech partner means choosing visibility: far more of the business is verifiable from the outside.
• A listed company answers to a financial market regulator (in Poland, the KNF), with enforced disclosure rules instead of internal promises.
• Recurring audits by independent external firms confirm the numbers, rather than leaving you with self-reported figures.
• Published financial information lets you, analysts, and your own finance team verify stability instead of taking it on faith.
• Yieldbird is part of the Agora Group, whose parent Agora S.A. is listed on the GPW, so publishers know who stands behind the Yieldbird Platform.

The post Public Company Ad Tech: The Transparency You Must Demand first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

This is where declining traffic ad revenue becomes a structural problem, not a marketing one. You cannot out-sell a smaller audience with the same ad layout you ran two years ago. To stay profitable, publishers need to extract more revenue from each session they still own. That is exactly the gap a smart slideshow ad format like Yieldbird’s MultiAnchor is built to close.

Why declining traffic ad revenue is a compounding problem

Programmatic revenue is, at its core, a function of three things: how many ad requests your inventory generates, how often those requests are filled, and at what price. Traffic loss attacks the first variable directly. If your sessions drop by 20%, your ad request volume drops with them, and so does your share of total ad spend in the market.

That last part is worth pausing on. Total programmatic ad spend is finite within any given window. The bigger your inventory, the bigger the slice of that spend you can win. When your inventory shrinks because traffic shrinks, you are not just earning less in absolute terms, you are losing share to publishers who found a way to keep their auction count high. Smaller players who have been struggling to grow revenue often discover that this is the leak they could never quite identify.

The honest answer is uncomfortable: if you do nothing, declining traffic ad revenue will keep eroding your business quarter after quarter. There is no organic floor that catches you.

The wrong way to fix it: more placements, more pain

The instinct, when revenue per session drops, is to add more ad slots. Stack a second anchor. Drop another rectangle into the article body. Squeeze a sticky sidebar into mobile views. Each of these moves can produce a short-term bump and a long-term cost.

Stacking placements harms the user in three specific ways:

• Cognitive load. Each new ad slot competes with the content the reader came for. Past a threshold, readers leave faster, which feeds back into the very traffic decline you are trying to offset.
• Layout chaos. Two anchors on the same screen, overlapping interstitials, or stacked rectangles produce a visual mess that damages brand trust and Core Web Vitals at the same time.
• Policy risk. Multi-render tricks, hidden placements, and other shortcuts that try to fake more auctions are the kinds of patterns Google flags. The lift evaporates the moment the policy team notices.

The reason harming the user is bad here is not just ethical, although it is also that. It is mechanical. Every short-term gain from a hostile layout is paid back in higher bounce, lower viewability, weaker session quality signals, and eventually softer demand. The numbers move in the wrong direction within a quarter or two.

The right way: smart slideshows turn one placement into many auctions

The cleaner answer is to keep the ad layout you have and generate more auctions from the placements you already run. That is the core idea behind smart ad-slideshows, and it is what MultiAnchor implements at the anchor placement.

A standard anchor monetizes once: the user lands, the auction fires, a creative loads, and that placement effectively goes quiet for the rest of the session. The reader stays for sixty seconds, three minutes, sometimes longer, while the anchor produces zero additional revenue. MultiAnchor changes that. It rotates creatives inside the same anchor slot on a cadence of four to five seconds, and crucially, each rotation triggers a fully independent auction with the full demand stack behind it. No multi-render. No stacking. No artificial impressions. Just more clean auctions per session, on a placement the user already accepted.

Three things make MultiAnchor smooth where naive approaches are jarring:

1. Only one creative is visible at any moment. The user experience is identical to a classic anchor. Same spot on the screen, same single ad, same dismiss behavior. The mechanics change underneath; the visual contract with the reader does not.
2. The next auction runs in the background while the current creative is on screen. There is no flash of empty space between rotations, no layout shift, no perceptible reload. Smoothness is engineered in, not patched on.
3. The four to five second cadence sits well above the one second viewability threshold. Every rotation registers as a real viewable impression under the MRC viewability standard, so baseline placement viewability holds. This is also why each rotation qualifies as a clean, independent auction rather than as the multi-render and impression-stuffing patterns that Google flags.

The result is a placement that captures revenue across the full session instead of just the first impression, without adding a single new ad slot to the page. In Yieldbird deployments, the net revenue uplift on the anchor placement typically lands between +30% and +50%, and on high-quality inventory with strong dwell time it can reach +70% or higher.

Why declining traffic ad revenue matters more now than three years ago

When traffic was growing, publishers could afford to monetize the easy part of a session and let the rest go. That margin is gone. Today, every session that walks in the door has to work harder, because there will be fewer of them next month and the month after.

Publishers who do not adopt a format like this are leaving substantial ad spend on the table. The auctions that should have run in seconds 5, 10, 15, 20 of every session are simply not happening, and the bids that would have won them go to publishers who solved the problem. This is the direction the ad tech industry has been moving for years: more value extracted from each session, proven by engagement and viewability rather than by ad slot count.

And for smaller publishers in particular, this is where lost ground gets recovered. A site that has watched its revenue slip for two years because traffic flattened can often claw back most of that decline by turning one well-positioned anchor into a sequence of auctions. Inventory expands without the page changing. The cake of available ad spend is fixed, but your slice of it grows.

No black boxes, no magic numbers

The ad tech market is full of vendors promising +100% uplifts through proprietary AI or secret-sauce optimizations. Most of the time, when you look behind the curtain, the lift comes from places you would not want it to come from: hidden ad slots, multi-render tricks, or simple double-counting of impressions. The number on the dashboard goes up; the risk on the policy side goes up faster, and the lift evaporates the moment Google’s policy team notices the pattern under ad placement policies.

Yieldbird takes the opposite approach. The math behind MultiAnchor is something you can explain to your Financial Director on a napkin: one anchor placement, rotating creatives every four to five seconds, each rotation a fully independent auction with the full demand stack. More auctions per session, on the same placement, under the same policy rules. That is where the +30% to +50% uplift comes from. No black box, no asterisks.

Getting started is straightforward too. Once you are on the Yieldbird Platform, MultiAnchor can be enabled on a single URL or subdomain first, A/B tested against your existing anchor, and scaled from there. The conversation about declining traffic ad revenue stops being abstract and starts being a number on a dashboard, usually within the first two weeks.

Key takeaways

• Declining traffic ad revenue is a structural problem: fewer sessions mean fewer ad requests, fewer auctions, and a smaller slice of finite programmatic spend.
• Stacking more placements to compensate harms users, layout, and policy standing, and the short-term gains do not survive a full year.
• Smart ad-slideshow formats like MultiAnchor generate more auctions from the placements you already run, without adding ad slots or hurting the reader experience.
• Each MultiAnchor rotation is a fully independent auction with the full demand stack, fully compliant with Google policy and IAB standards.
• Publishers who skip this kind of format leave substantial ad spend on the table; smaller publishers in particular can recover ground lost to flat or declining traffic.
• Net revenue uplift on the anchor placement typically lands between +30% and +50%, with higher numbers on high-quality inventory.

The post Suffering declining ad revenue? How you must act now first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

What does disableInitialLoad() do?

By default, calling googletag.display() on an ad slot triggers three things at once:

1. Registers the ad slot
2. Sends an ad request to Google Ad Manager
3. Renders the returned creative

This is a problem for publishers using Prebid or other header bidding technologies. The wrapper needs time to collect bids before the ad request goes to GAM. If GPT fires instantly, bid data never reaches the ad server and the publisher loses revenue.

disableInitialLoad() fixes this by splitting the process in two (see Google’s guide on controlling ad loading):

• display() only registers the slot (no ad request is sent)
• The ad request is deferred until the publisher explicitly calls googletag.pubads().refresh()

This gives the header bidding auction time to complete and attach bid targeting to the slots before GAM sees the request.

Nearly every Prebid.js integration in production today depends on this mechanism. Other common use cases include:

• Holding ad requests until user consent is granted (GDPR/TCF flows)
• Implementing custom lazy loading logic
• Controlling ad loading on single-page applications where slots are defined dynamically

What is changing now that disableInitialLoad is deprecated?

Google is not removing the ability to disable initial load. The feature remains fully supported. What is changing is how you configure it.

As part of a broader migration to a unified configuration API, Google deprecated several legacy PubAdsService methods and replaced them with the new googletag.setConfig() interface. Now that disableInitialLoad is deprecated, the old method call no longer represents best practice.

Similarly, the companion check method has changed:

• Old: googletag.pubads().isInitialLoadDisabled()
• New: googletag.getConfig("disableInitialLoad")

The legacy methods still work today. Behind the scenes they already route through the new config framework. But Google has stated they will be removed in a future GPT release. No specific date has been announced, and Google does not typically publish sunset timelines far in advance.

It is not just disableInitialLoad: other deprecated GPT methods

While disableInitialLoad is deprecated and gets the most attention from header bidding publishers, Google has deprecated over a dozen other PubAdsService methods in the same migration. Depending on your ad stack, some of these may be equally critical for your setup. The fact that disableInitialLoad is deprecated alongside so many other methods signals that Google is serious about moving the entire ecosystem to the new API.

Here are the most important deprecated methods grouped by what they control:

Ad loading and rendering

• disableInitialLoad() controls when ad requests are sent. Critical for header bidding. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ disableInitialLoad: true }).
• enableSingleRequest() enables Single Request Architecture (SRA), which batches all ad requests into one call. Important for roadblocks and competitive exclusions. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ singleRequest: true }).
• enableLazyLoad() enables lazy loading of ads based on viewport proximity. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ lazyLoad: {...} }).
• collapseEmptyDivs() hides ad slots when no creative is returned. Affects layout stability and CLS scores. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ collapseDiv: "ON_NO_FILL" }).

Targeting and key-values

• setTargeting() / clearTargeting() manage page-level key-value targeting sent to GAM. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ targeting: {...} }).
• setCategoryExclusion() / clearCategoryExclusions() manage ad category blocking labels. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ categoryExclusion: [...] }).
• setLocation() passes geo-location data for line item targeting. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ location: "..." }).

SafeFrame and rendering controls

• setForceSafeFrame() / setSafeFrameConfig() control whether ads render inside SafeFrame containers. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ safeFrame: {...} }).
• setCentering() controls horizontal centering of ads. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ centering: true }).

Video and AdSense

• enableVideoAds() / setVideoContent() configure video ad settings and content exclusions. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ videoAds: {...} }).
• set() / get() / getAttributeKeys() manage AdSense attributes. Replaced by googletag.setConfig({ adsenseAttributes: {...} }) and googletag.getConfig().

The same pattern applies to slot-level methods on the googletag.Slot object: setTargeting(), clearTargeting(), setCategoryExclusion(), setCollapseEmptyDiv(), setClickUrl(), setForceSafeFrame(), setSafeFrameConfig(), and set() are all deprecated in favour of slot.setConfig().

In every case the underlying feature is preserved. Only the method you use to configure it is changing. The new setConfig() API groups all settings into a single, structured interface, which makes configuration easier to manage and less error-prone.

How does the disableInitialLoad deprecation affect publishers?

Every publisher using header bidding needs to check whether their ad tag still relies on the now deprecated disableInitialLoad method. With disableInitialLoad deprecated, the tag must be updated before Google removes the legacy API. But the audit should not stop there. Any tag using the legacy methods listed above needs attention.

The migration itself is typically a one-line code change per method. But the timing is unpredictable. Google does not pre-announce removal dates, so there is a real risk of missing the window.

Yieldbird Platform is ready

Key takeaways

• Google has deprecated over a dozen legacy GPT methods as part of a migration to the new googletag.setConfig() API. The features remain, only the syntax is changing.
• For header bidding publishers, disableInitialLoad deprecated is the most critical change. Without updating, your Prebid integration will silently break.
• Other commonly used methods like enableSingleRequest(), enableLazyLoad(), collapseEmptyDivs(), and setTargeting() are also deprecated and need the same migration.
• Google has not announced a removal date, but they rarely give advance warning. Audit your tags now.
• If you are a Yieldbird Platform client, we have it covered. All deprecated methods used by Yieldbird Tag are already migrated.

The post disableInitialLoad deprecated: What every Publisher must do now first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

The programmatic advertising landscape is constantly evolving, and one of the latest developments comes from The Trade Desk with its new product: OpenAds

What is OpenAds?

OpenAds, developed by The Trade Desk, is based on Prebid’s open-source framework – the technology that has powered thousands of online ad auctions for years. Similar in concept to wrappers from Prebid.org and Amazon Publisher Services, OpenAds facilitates programmatic auctions with built-in verification features that enable auditable and standardized auction processes, all operating within The Trade Desk’s infrastructure.

How Trade Desk wants to win

The Trade Desk claims that OpenAds is supposed to bring several advantages for the digital advertising ecosystem:

• Increased transparency: OpenAds provides open, auditable auction logic and uses code attestations, allowing advertisers and publishers to verify what is actually running in the system. By removing manipulation and “noise” in auctions, outcomes are predictable and fair.
• Improved performance: By eliminating unfair practices such as request duplication, metadata manipulation, and dynamic take rates, OpenAds enables more efficient use of advertising budgets, so advertisers only bid on high-quality impressions.
• Better insights: Transparent and auditable auctions allow publishers to analyze bidder strategies, understand the true value of their inventory, and make informed decisions about pricing and yield management.

At the same time, some might notice that full visibility and data control remain with The Trade Desk. While this setup can greatly enhance efficiency for buyers, it surely will be less open to other participants in the ecosystem.

Expert Perspective

A few words from our CPO, Marcin Hajduk:

“Having as strong a market position as The Trade Desk does, building its own auction wrapper seems like a natural evolution of its system, allowing it to better compete with Amazon, which did exactly the same with APS. Such a setup would also enable The Trade Desk to process far more data than it could as a Prebid bidder alone, since it would gain full visibility into the bidding behavior of other auction participants. Naturally, this information would be available only to The Trade Desk and not to other ‘OpenAds’ bidders. More is not always better, but if this solution does not impair ad speed too much, it might be an interesting addition to the existing ad stack. That’s the key, though – it’s an addition, not a replacement for Prebid or APS.”

Key Takeaways

OpenAds is an interesting development in programmatic advertising and is the next phase of The Trade Desk’s Open Path initiative. It lets the company use its strong market position to improve efficiency by gaining direct insight into auction dynamics. With this visibility, they can fine-tune their bidding and improve performance and revenue. Even if some data is shared with other auction participants, The Trade Desk is likely to benefit the most. That said, publishers can also gain, provided that OpenAds is tested carefully and used as an addition to the current header bidding setup, not a full replacement of it.

The post OpenAds: understanding the Trade Desk’s new auction wrapper first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

The post Prebid.js 10 – what to focus on? first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

What is a Transaction ID (TID) in programmatic?

How Prebid treated TIDs until now

• ortb2.source.tid: auction identifier
• ortb2Imp.ext.tid: impression/Ad unit identifier

The change: bidder-specific TIDs (Prebid.js 10.9.0)

• ortb2.source.tid is unique per Bidder
• ortb2Imp.ext.tid is generated per Bidder × transaction
• Adapter-visible .auctionId/.transactionId now reference those ORTB2 fields
• Publisher-provided first-party values are ignored for these fields

Standards view: IAB Tech Lab’s objection

OpenRTB’s intent is clear: TID should be common across participants. The IAB Tech Lab publicly said Prebid’s new behavior is “materially non-compliant with the OpenRTB specification” and urged the industry to address concerns through the spec process, not unilateral changes.

The Publisher perspective: risks, trade-offs, and what to do next

1. Yield protection vs. buyer efficiency A shared TID helps DSPs cut waste – but it can also expose your effective floors and path economics across SSPs. If buyers can “map” your paths, they may favor cheaper routes or avoid deals/PMPs, pressuring net CPMs. Bidder-specific TIDs reduce that stitching risk.
2. Privacy & contractual posture Some publishers have contractual limits on data sharing and want to minimize cross-party joins that piece together user or deal metadata. Prebid previously made TIDs opt-in for similar reasons; the bidder-specific shift extends that posture.
3. Auction integrity means different things Buyers see integrity as avoiding duplicate auctions. Publishers see it as keeping competition strong without exposing pricing or path details. Without a clear standard, buyers may push you to make paths more transparent for SPO.
4. Product reality: change is opt-in Nothing flips on unless you enable TIDs. With 10.9.0+, enabling TIDs gives you Bidder-scoped TIDs by default; you cannot force a single cross-exchange TID from Prebid.js anymore. (Prebid Server would need its own update to match).

Practical guidance for Publishers

Decide at the Domain level (recommended):

• If you enabled TIDs to help a key buyer deduplicate, check if Bidder-specific TIDs still meet their needs. Many DSPs will now use heuristics (GPID/Ad unit, timestamps, SSP seller IDs) to deduplicate.
• If you kept TIDs off for privacy or yield, 10.9.0 helps: you can enable TIDs without exposing a shared cross-SSP join key.

Configuration checklist (Prebid.js):

• Audit your wrapper version. If moving to 10.9.0+, document that TIDs are Bidder-specific.
• If you want any TID at all, set pbjs.setConfig({enableTIDs:true}). Keep a runbook that explains to commercial teams what this means for SPO conversations.

Signals to offer instead of shared TID (case-by-case):

• GPID (global placement) and stable Ad unit identifiers
• Deal hygiene: clean, consistent naming and clear package structures reduce buyer need to infer paths
• Server-side parity: if you use Prebid Server, coordinate with your Vendor to keep policies aligned

Measurement:

Where this likely lands

Bottom line for Publishers

• If you value yield protection/path opacity: 10.9.0 is aligned with your goals; you can enable TIDs without exposing a universal join key.
• If a key buyer insists on dedup via TID: align expectations – Prebid can’t provide a cross-exchange TID client-side anymore; offer GPID/placement stability and collaborate on heuristics.
• Stay engaged with standards: the outcome will shape SPO, privacy, and data rights for years.

The post Transaction IDs in Prebid just changed. Here’s what Publishers need to know. first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Google Changes Its Mind: Cookies Are Staying (For Now)

The biggest twist came in July 2024, when Google officially announced it would not phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, at least not in the way it had promised back in 2020.
Instead of default blocking, Google decided to let users manage cookies via privacy settings, keeping them enabled by default.

Why the change? Several reasons drove this decision:

• Regulatory pressure, especially from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which raised concerns about competition and how Privacy Sandbox could unfairly concentrate ad tech power.
  
• Strong pushback from advertisers and publishers, who warned that abruptly cutting off cookies would lead to massive drops in ad revenues and disrupt the open web.
  
• Doubts about the maturity of replacements, such as Google’s own Privacy Sandbox, which is still evolving and faces scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates.
  

Privacy Sandbox Still Under Construction

Even though third-party cookies are still alive in Chrome, Google is heavily investing in the Privacy Sandbox, which aims to reduce individual tracking while still enabling ad targeting and measurement.

Some of the core components include:

• Topics API, which allows browsers to share broad interest categories instead of detailed browsing histories.
  
• Protected Audience (FLEDGE) for on-device retargeting.
  
• Attribution Reporting, to measure ad conversions without exposing user-level data.
  

However, these technologies are still being tested and debated, and many advertisers remain cautious about fully shifting budgets to these new methods.

Meanwhile, Other Browsers Still Block Cookies

While Chrome continues to support third-party cookies, Safari and Firefox have long blocked them by default, driving many marketers to build alternative strategies such as:

• First-party data initiatives, collecting consented data directly from their own users.
  
• Contextual advertising, targeting based on the content of a page rather than user profiles.
  
• Server-side tracking and universal IDs, to future-proof campaign measurement and targeting.
  

What This Means for the Industry Now

The upshot is that third-party cookies are not going away immediately, but their role is undeniably shrinking. Brands and publishers who spent the last few years preparing for a cookieless world-by investing in robust first-party data, testing Privacy Sandbox, and adopting contextual tools-are now better positioned for long-term resilience.

Meanwhile, regulators across the globe are still eyeing both cookies and cookie alternatives, so it’s possible more changes could come by 2026.

Key Takeaways for Marketers & Publishers

Marketers and publishers shouldn’t slow down their first-party data strategies or consent management just because Chrome’s phase-out of third-party cookies has been delayed. It remains essential to continue experimenting with Privacy Sandbox APIs, since they are likely to become industry standards in the future. At the same time, investing in stronger contextual and semantic targeting capabilities will help reduce dependence on user-level tracking and prepare for a more privacy-centric ecosystem. Finally, it’s crucial to keep a close watch on regional data privacy regulations, as these laws are evolving on their own timelines, often independently of Google’s decisions, and could significantly impact how data-driven advertising is executed.

The post Are Third-Party Cookies Really Going Away? The Latest Status in 2025 first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

In programmatic advertising, curation refers to the process of selecting and packaging publisher inventory-often within private marketplaces (PMPs)-and enhancing it with audience data to create more valuable offerings for advertisers. Traditionally, advertisers would layer third-party audience data onto their campaigns through demand-side platforms (DSPs). However, the industry is shifting, with supply-side platforms (SSPs) now taking a leading role in curation to reduce dependence on third-party cookies.

Over the past few years, SSPs have rolled out specialized curation solutions like PubMatic Encore (2020) and Xandr Curate (2021), with platforms such as Magnite, Index Exchange, and Nexxen following suit. Even companies once firmly in the data management platform (DMP) category-like Audigent and Lotame-have pivoted toward offering curation services.

At its core, curation involves a third-party entity that does not own or directly transact media but instead selects and organizes inventory into premium packages. These curated packages might include audiences browsing certain content categories, showing specific purchase intent, or even inventory with high viewability scores.

While curation may resemble traditional ad networks (which also connect buyers and sellers), it’s rooted in modern programmatic infrastructure. By shifting more of the audience data application to the sell side, curation strengthens supply-side optimization and reduces reliance on DSP-driven targeting. This approach may prove crucial for sustaining large-scale activation of second- and third-party audiences in an open market as third-party cookies disappear.

Why is Curation Gaining Momentum?

Curation isn’t entirely new, but it’s booming now due to the decline of legacy audience signals such as third-party cookies and Apple’s IDFA. Previously, advertisers mostly applied audience data through DSPs. As the industry pivots toward first-party data strategies, SSPs and publishers offer more transparency and control over the buying process.

This shift has fueled the rise of sell-side curation, changing how data is applied and optimized while keeping the core DSP–SSP relationship intact. Enter curation houses: specialized intermediaries that connect advertisers, publishers, and third-party data providers.

Here’s how it typically works:

• A curation house matches identity graphs across these players on the sell side.
  
• It ships audience segments to the SSP.
  
• The SSP finds matches with first-party data or universal IDs across publisher sites.
  
• The SSP then packages this audience into a Deal-ID and sends it to the DSP.
  

This means the DSP doesn’t have to process user-level identifiers within bid requests-the audience has already been matched upstream. This process boosts addressability, user privacy, and operational efficiency.

As a result, SSPs and curation houses now offer many capabilities once reserved for DMPs, helping keep second- and third-party audience activation alive in a programmatic world that’s rapidly losing cookies.

The Benefits of Sell-Side Curation

Sell-side curation has taken off because it creates meaningful advantages for all stakeholders: data owners, publishers, and buyers.

For Data Owners

• Integrate data once and deploy it across all DSPs via Deal-IDs, simplifying workflows.
  
• Gain more control over monetization through flexible pricing (revenue share, CPM, etc.).
  
• Choose exactly which buyers get access via private marketplaces.
  
• Apply data not only to users but also to contextual signals like site categories or placements.
  
• Stay independent from direct media transactions.
  

For Publishers

• Extend the reach of their audiences beyond owned sites through curated deals.
  
• Better leverage their first-party data in programmatic auctions.
  
• Improve contextual targeting capabilities.
  
• Reduce dependence on DSP-driven supply path optimization (SPO).
  
• Gain clearer insights into why and how their inventory is being purchased.
  
• Maintain stronger pricing control tied to audience data.
  

For Buyers

• Access higher-quality inventory with built-in brand safety measures.
  
• Embrace privacy-centric targeting models fit for the post-cookie era.
  
• See improved efficiency and scale-some buyers report 25–40% greater reach.
  
• Reduce reliance on opaque DSP audience segments by tapping directly into curated data.
  
• Enjoy more flexible targeting compared to programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals.
  

Challenges and Considerations

Despite these benefits, sell-side curation does introduce some complexities:

• Potential DSP pushback: With more data activation happening on the sell side, DSPs might lose influence over audience strategy.
  
• An added layer in the chain: Some advertisers are trying to reduce intermediaries, and curation introduces another step.
  
• Higher costs: Curated marketplaces often come at a premium due to their enhanced targeting and scale.
  
• Data infrastructure requirements: Effectively handling audience data demands tech investments and trusted partnerships, adding operational overhead.
  

Conclusion

Sell-side curation is reshaping programmatic advertising by offering a privacy-friendly, future-proof alternative to traditional audience targeting. By moving data application to the sell side, it delivers greater transparency, efficiency, and control-helping advertisers thrive even as third-party cookies fade away.

Yes, there are challenges, from added supply chain complexity to premium costs. But the benefits of curated marketplaces-from richer data applications to improved campaign performance-are driving widespread adoption. As the industry evolves, sell-side curation is emerging as a vital bridge connecting advertisers with high-quality audiences in a secure, efficient, and scalable way.

The post How Curation Is Transforming Programmatic Advertising in the Post-Cookie Era first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

To gain insight into what lies ahead, we’ve consulted top industry experts—leaders in ad tech, data analytics, and media buying—to share their perspectives on the biggest challenges, trends, fears and strategies that allowed them to thrive in programmatic advertising. Through the growing importance of AI and innovation, to the key success metrics, their views offer a comprehensive summary of 2024’s dynamic programmatic landscape.

We asked 6 questions:

1. Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year?
2. How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies?
3. What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them?
4. With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem?
5. What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them?
6. To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025?

Here are their thoughts.

Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year? – Finding ways to keep-up our margin while the display media spends are generally stagnating. Also navigating through the complexity of programmatic media selling at the same time. In parallel we can feel that traditional media houses compete heavily with social media and the still increasing spend on these platforms.

How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies? – Contextual advertising was one of our biggest focus areas. Offering alternatives to the slowly but surely signalless traffic. We have a quite high iOS traffic share in Switzerland, and were very early on forced to act. Now we offer Contextual & Data Cleanroom targeting. 

What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them? – Traffic Decrease due to AI Agents – something we can’t have an effect on, [we address them by] changing User behaviour. 

With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem? – Currently I do not see too much impact on our industry – GenAi will change the Buy side and agency industry first – but rather on the creation/creative end of things, but also real time campaign optimisation. Once agents are good enough trading and reporting can also be effected. 

What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them? – I think the market will try to find effective ways to lower the overall take rate – more direct integrations by large advertisers through header bidding integrations. (Adnuntius, TTD Open Path, etc.) Curation is now a buzzword, and will grow in use, but there are many players that do not add much value – although the ones with good signals and data could build a business around it. 

To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025? – We optimize our entire corporation towards EBIT – but this year and next year is going to be the year of our DACH expansion and growth. So we also look to increase revenues. We will focus on increasing Impressions through new valuable inventory, as well as increasing overall CPM through new formats and data (data clean rooms or retail media offering) 

Phil Zeidler

Director Programmatic & Yield, Audienzz (Switzerland)

LinkedIn

Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year? – The biggest challenge in 2024 was adapting to changes related to user privacy protection, particularly in the context of implementing regulations such as the Digital Markets Act and replacing third-party cookies with technologies based on first-party data. Additionally, managing performance and monetization in a header bidding environment required investments in infrastructure optimization and the development of partnerships with trusted technology providers.

How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies? – The programmatic market for publishers has been dynamically developing thanks to:

• Header Bidding 2.0 – further improvements in server-side integration (server-to-server) and latency reduction.
• Expansion of AI and ML usage – better real-time user value forecasting, which enhanced auction efficiency.
• Growth in the role of contextual targeting – due to personal data limitations.
• Retail Media – collaboration with retail networks in the context of programmatic advertising based on sales data.

Publishers’ strategies were based on diversifying revenue sources, investing in analytical technologies, and implementing hybrid monetization models that combined subscriptions and advertising.

What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them?

– Key challenges include:

• Fully transitioning to a post-cookie environment – developing new user identification methods that are both effective and compliant with regulations.
• Managing ad quality – addressing issues such as ad fraud and improving user experience.
• Inflation in technology costs – rising prices of servers and infrastructure impacting publishers’ margins.

Preparations involve:

• Testing alternative solutions, such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox and other platforms based on aggregated data.
• Educating teams and collaborating with technology providers on privacy protection.

With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem? – AI is becoming a key tool in:

• Automating bidding decisions – AI enables the analysis of more data in real time, leading to better advertising decisions.
• Content personalization – ads are more tailored to user needs without relying on sensitive data.
• Revenue optimization – AI supports dynamic CPM forecasting and better utilization of ad inventory.

However, the growth of AI in 2024 has necessitated increased transparency in algorithms and the explanation of decisions made by machines.

What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them? – Universal IDs and cookieless solutions – identification standards will be crucial in the post-cookie era.

• Growth of video and CTV (Connected TV) – new video ad formats are attracting larger advertising budgets.
• Development of edge computing technologies – minimizing latency in programmatic bidding.
• Increased platform interoperability – integrations between publishers, SSPs, and DSPs will become smoother thanks to next-generation APIs.

Publishers are preparing by investing in research and development to remain competitive.

To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025? – Key Metrics in 2024:

• Viewability and CTR as measures of user engagement.
• eCPM – optimizing revenue per 1,000 impressions.
• Fill Rate – effectiveness in selling ad inventory.

Shifting Priorities in 2025:

• Ad quality metrics – such as brand safety and user experience.
• User value analysis – leveraging lifetime value more effectively through first-party data.
• Sustainability – greater focus on the energy efficiency of advertising operations.

Bartłomiej Baliński

Head of Programmatic and AdTech, BoredPanda (Lithuania)

LinkedIn

Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year? – For publishers and their programmatic revenue – especially from open auctions – 2024 brought two significant challenges:

1. The anticipated deprecation of third-party cookies.
2. Changes in requirements and rules for in-stream video ad placements.

Both issues posed a threat to the efficiency of monetizing inventory within the current technological ecosystem.

How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies? – In my opinion, the programmatic market in 2024 developed relatively predictably, maintaining typical seasonality. A slight deviation from this ‘predictability’ occurred in March, where there was a noticeable increase in video ad spending, higher than expected. The reason for this, in my view, lies in the fact that new rules for in-stream video ad placements were set to take effect on April 1, and there was some uncertainty about how they would impact campaign executions.

What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them? – I perceive 2025 as a year that should be relatively stable, without major market surprises (knock on wood!). From our perspective, we aim to continue developing our advertising product, offering advertisers an increasingly broader range of options – both in open auctions and in premium programmatic sales. We also want to stabilize our current advertising setup, both in terms of ad tech and the partners we work with.

With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem? – At this moment, from the perspective of programmatic on the publishing side, I don’t see a game-changing impact of AI. Of course, these tools can be used to automate reporting or alert processes, which can indirectly have a positive effect on performance. Perhaps on the buying side, AI may have a greater significance at this stage.

What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them? – In our case, we will focus on developing strategies based on first-party data, regardless of Google’s decision to delay the deprecation of third-party cookies. There is also an observable trend of using, or rather testing, so-called soft paywall solutions. Perhaps this is a direction that some publishers will pursue.

To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025? – Always, the main indicator that determines whether we are doing a good job is the RPM level. This metric and its determinants will remain under constant control and will be of the greatest importance for this part of our business.

Adam Zaręba

Programmatic Sales Director, Iberion (Poland)

LinkedIn

Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year? – Privacy Regulations and Data Protection One of the most significant challenges in 2024 has been adapting to increasingly stringent privacy regulations and the evolving landscape of data protection laws. As third-party cookie deprecation continues, publishers and advertisers are focusing on first-party data and new methods of tracking, such as server-to-server connections or using first-party data in innovative ways. Additionally, ensuring compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws across different regions while maintaining effective advertising strategies has been a complex issue.

How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies? – The programmatic landscape has shifted toward more privacy-conscious and transparent practices. In 2024, there has been a noticeable move from third-party data reliance toward first-party data and a growing emphasis on first-party identifiers. This shift has led to increased interest in contextual targeting and data clean rooms as tools for maintaining ad performance while protecting consumer privacy. Publishers are heavily investing in building their first-party data assets and creating new ways of engaging audiences through owned content.

With the growing regulations, publishers are using cookieless targeting strategies, such as contextual and cohort-based targeting. The continued expansion of CTV and digital video ad budgets, along with the ability to serve targeted ads to more fragmented TV audiences, has created new opportunities for publishers.

What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them? – Despite advancements in ad verification and safety measures, ad fraud remains a growing concern. As fraud tactics evolve, it will be crucial to stay ahead of these threats through continuous investment in verification tools and ensuring transparency.

With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem? – AI is revolutionizing programmatic advertising and digital publishing by providing more efficient ways to target and serve ads, optimize campaigns in real-time, and understand user behavior with greater precision. AI-driven algorithms are enhancing targeting, bidding strategies, and content personalization.

What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them? – As AI and machine learning continue to evolve, they will drive automation, personalization, and smarter ad targeting. Publishers will increasingly use immersive formats to create more engaging advertising experiences that blend seamlessly with content, especially in e-commerce, entertainment, and gaming.

To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025? – With stricter privacy laws, consent rates and data opt-ins will be a more important metric to track. More advanced models that can better track cross-channel engagement will become critical as the ecosystem becomes more fragmented.

As green advertising becomes a priority, environmental and sustainability indicators will also begin to play a role in measuring success.

Tiago Costa Martins

Head of Digital Monetisation & Ad Operations, RTP (Portugal)

LinkedIn

Looking back at 2024, what was the biggest challenge this year? – As someone new to the industry, I’d say one of the biggest challenges has been adapting to the rapid pace of technological advancements and understanding how to effectively implement them for growth.

How has the programmatic advertising landscape evolved for publishers in 2024, and what trends have had the biggest impact on your strategies? – In 2024, programmatic advertising has seen a surge in the adoption of video and native ad formats. The evolution of header bidding technologies and increased reliance on AI for optimization have significantly influenced publisher strategies, pushing us to experiment more and refine our approach.

What are the biggest fears or concerns heading into 2025, and how are you preparing to address them? – A key concern is keeping up with the continuous innovation in ad tech and ensuring our setup remains competitive. To address this, we’re focusing on improving operational efficiency, staying updated with emerging trends, and building strong partnerships with trusted solutions providers.

With the growing importance of AI, how do you see its impact on the ecosystem? – AI is proving transformative, helping publishers optimize ad delivery, improve user experience, and enhance ad performance. While I see AI as a game-changer, there’s also a need to ensure its implementation aligns with our overall strategic goals.

What technological innovations do you think will define the next wave of digital publishing, and how are you preparing to leverage them? – The next wave will likely be defined by advancements in video advertising, immersive ad formats, and more seamless integrations of ad tech platforms. We’re preparing by exploring new ad formats, testing innovative solutions, and continuously learning to adapt to changes in the landscape.

To measure your success, what key indicators have you been focusing on this year? Will that change in 2025? – This year, the focus has been on eCPM, fill rates, and overall revenue growth. In 2025, we aim to expand these metrics to include deeper insights into ad performance and audience engagement to ensure sustained growth.

Bianca Osvat

Project Manager, Russ Media (Austria)

LinkedIn

By embracing new strategies, the future of programmatic advertising is full of opportunities for those ready to evolve with the landscape. Are you prepared to adapt and seize them in 2025?

The post Reflecting On 2024 – Expert Insights on the Programmatic Industry first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.

Let’s start with the past, a small summary of 2024, which comes to an end. How did it go for you? Was it according to your expectations, or did something unexpected happen?

Satya Vinnakota, Director of Ads, Vinted:

I’m really amazed that we’re mid December, I don’t know how did it pass so quickly. I think 2024 was very rewarding, but also at the same time very challenging for us. As you explained, Vinted is a marketplace, so obviously our core revenue is what we generate from people trading second-hand clothes and items on our platform, and ad revenue is an additional revenue. I think one trend which is very challenging for us is to create a very rich ad experience when your core business is trying to do something else. It’s a struggle with the product, decision maker, stakeholder – even if you go with the experimentation implementation model. It’s still a lot of challenge to conceptualize the ad experience and try to figure out if advertisers are going to buy it programmatically – if not, try to sell them directly. But like I said, it’s also rewarding when you do something like this from scratch and you build an ad experience, which works with advertisers and users, because they’re looking at the ad they want to interact with.

Frantisek Kosir, Senior Programmatic Yield specialist, Madwire:

For me it’s practically 3 things. One – the expectations of the beginning of the cookieless world, so we did everything we could in order to prepare as much as we could for this possible big disaster that was coming, but, luckily, did not happen. Now we can use all the audiences and the data we have built, even though the ,,cookieless’’ is not coming yet, but it will eventually show up. Two – the new Google Video Declaration Policy, that was a blow for us, and I think many of the publishers around here in Slovakia were struggling with that. We’re still at a point where we can’t recover the full revenue that we got previously, so it’s very challenging. It also makes us think about things differently, so thank you Google for the opportunity. Another challenge was seeing Google Open Bidding Product going into almost zero performance. We’re not sure what was happening during the year, but compared to 2023 the performance is much worse. Looks like it’s waking up slowly, but we’re not sure if it will go back to the previous numbers.

Piotr Bartłoszewski, Head of Growth and Digital Sales, Wyborcza:

I need to say that we’re a subscription business. Now that we’re bigger, we have almost 300k active subscribers, so they put a lot of trust in us and what we do. Having that in mind, we do everything we need for them first, then users and then monetization of our website. 2024 was an exceptional time in the development in AI, especially chatbots, which had a positive impact on our communication and business. Chatbots today offer advanced futures, ranging from real time analytics of large data sets to the creation of precisely tailored content. Of course, I can say that this year we were expecting, as an industry, a huge change. The cookieless was to come, and the surprise was rather positive. Google retreated from planned extinction of third-party cookies. The process – which really changed the way we really collect data and target ads – was deleted several times and Google eventually said to put it on hold. But for us it wasn’t a lost time, we were waiting for a cookieless world, but it has forced the advertising industry to adapt its strategies to develop new and innovative solutions. And the first half of 2024 was an intense time of preparations and testing alternative ways of monetization. Even though the world without ,,cookie” has not become reality, the effort we put into the development of first-party data, contextual advertising or content personalization has generated a lot of value.

Now, having covered the past, let’s dive deep into current challenges and how you think it will be in 2025. Will there be other challenges to come?

Satya Vinnakota, Director of Ads, Vinted:

The biggest challenge would be connected to running the ad business and metrics ex. increasing revenue per active user, but at the same time restrict impressions per active user. That means we want to show less ads, but make more revenue, which leads us to generating performance for the advertisers. As long as they spend money on ads on Vinted vs what they get back is positive, they will continue to spend and it will increase their budgets. I think the biggest challenge there is to figure out how we could use innovative ad formats to grab this. I’m not talking about what already works in the programmatic environment, like banners, interstitials, especially when it comes to mobiles because our business is very heavy there. One of the things we experimented with is to work very closely with subscription businesses and offer very specific promotions for Vinted members, ex. Hellofresh. They offer very fast and specific offer, only for Vinted members that are non-existent on the open internet. We run an ad when a customer finishes a transaction on our platform, which is a happy moment, and we say ,,Congratulations! There is an offer for you to register at Hellofresh and you get the first month for free, it’s on us”. These kinds of things are still a challenge, because everything is very conceptual and we don’t know if we can reach scale with that kind of ad. The other thing that I’m very worried about is bot automation. Now with AI and how quickly you can create creatives, there are a lot of bad actors. Typical examples would be all these dating websites or so-called dating apps, with creatives built in bad taste. We don’t want to show these ads, but because it’s becoming super easy to make them, run so many of them at the same time, even if we start blocking one creative after another with different mechanisms, I see a big rise in bad actors. Of course, with the programmatic setup we get scale, but we also get problems. We have to solve them very quickly, and ad quality is definitely a big challenge. We don’t want to show ads of our competitors, which is any fast-hand trading. Our mission is to promote second hand, and we definitely don’t want any Temu, Shein, and other fast-fashion businesses. 

Piotr Bartłoszewski, Head of Growth and Digital Sales, Wyborcza:

Subscription business is connected with quality, so long story short – quality and authenticity are very important. Today, we’re dominated by fake news and AI generated content, so authenticity is gaining new unique value. Users expect from us, publishers, to be sincere in our messages and clear presentation of our values. So building a community based on truth and trust became a key element of our communication strategy. This approach will drive greater audience engagement. I think brands will look for partners or environments that not only offer white reach, but – above all – partners who bring together an engagement community based on shared values. The era of empty numbers is coming to an end and the relationship based on authentic dialog is giving meaning. I’m talking about it, because more than half of the people believe that they fall into fake news, and according to Newsworks’ study conducted in the UK, almost 80% of users are concerned about it. 25% of them believe that they are able to detect fake news themselves. Most of them said that they would turn to newspaper websites, like ours, to verify stories they read on social media. This is an important role for publishers. Also, I mentioned quality, which is important in advertising. Our current focus at Wyborcza is attention, and this is becoming the key. The VA indicators have been with us for more than 10 years and we have to ask ourselves whether this is all we can hope for. The user receives several thousands advertising messages a day, so the question is if displaying 50% of ad for 1 second and counting it as visible by metric system is effective enough. Viewability is important, will be important, but probably not enough. We have developed a high attention package based on our SuperUser, digital subscriber who is paying for reading our articles. This is connected to technical targeting by using units with highest VA and – what is more important – the highest visibility time. Also, in addition to this, with our friends from Yieldbird, we have implemented more user engaging solutions of Adnami, and they definitely have higher impact than normal banners (higher CTR), and the client receives analytical metrics at the end including the attention rate. We believe that qualitative advertising activities are being a long term success.

Frantisek Kosir, Senior Programmatic Yield specialist, Madwire:

My views are slightly different due to the market as well. One of the biggest challenges we’re facing right now is the declining trend of pageviews generated across the whole market in Slovakia. For some publishers it’s around -10 to -20% of pageviews, which is really a lot. It’s a strange trend, meaning to wake up the lost inventory in order to feed the programmatic revenue, at the same level or even higher. In order to secure that number, we’re currently testing and will be introducing rewarding ads on one of largest news websites in Slovakia for the comment sections. We understood that it;s a very delicate group of people, and only a small change can send them away, so we’re trying to find the right amount of ads they would  be able to digest. This is something that I’m looking forward to next year. The second thing would be to educate, especially the sales department, to start using more opportunities of the first-party data they are giving them. So far, we don’t see any benefits of that in the open market. We’re sending out the first-party data and looking for  whatever we’re able to attract, but don’t see it being evaluated by the open market in any way. Using these in the stage of going cookieless, it would probably be beneficial. We want to educate them, and look forward to doing so next year. 

The post YieldFest 2024 – Panel Discussion: Tackling Challenges and Seizing Opportunities in the Future of Digital Advertising first appeared on Yieldbird - Research Hub.