Amazon Publisher Services (APS) are revolutionizing the header bidding market by offering two innovative solutions: Unified Ad Marketplace (UAM) and Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM).
Unlocking the Power of Amazon Publisher Services
APS serves as the platform for all of Amazon’s marketing services, catering to publishers looking to establish, enhance, and expand their digital media businesses. This comprehensive suite of services includes:
- Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM)
- Unified Ad Marketplace (UAM)
- Connections Marketplace
Source: APS
Both TAM and UAM leverage the power of header bidding. This innovative ad technology allows publishers to simultaneously offer their available ad spots to multiple ad exchanges, fostering healthy competition. By leveraging Amazon’s cloud-based marketplace, publishers can maximize revenue and identify the most effective advertising tactics with ease.
What Is Connections Marketplace?
Connections Marketplace serves as a service marketplace, empowering publishers to explore and test various vendors across essential categories such as creative formats, advertising identity, and creative quality. This invaluable resource enables publishers to optimize their ad stack and enhance user experience. The best part? Using Connections Marketplace incurs no APS fees, although specific vendors may charge fees based on their respective services.
APS, Open Bidding, and Prebid: A Comparison
Publishers have the opportunity to experiment with an array of header bidding wrappers, including APS, Open Bidding, Prebid, and more. While it’s crucial not to overload the client-side auction with excessive exchanges or timeouts, finding the right technology that seamlessly integrates with your existing setup and generates a high match rate with top players like Google is key.
Understanding Google Open Bidding
Google’s Open Bidding presents itself as a server-side header bidding solution. In this setup, multiple SSPs and ad exchanges directly compete with Google’s Ad Exchange (AdX). By moving the auction to the ad server instead of the user’s browser, Open Bidding significantly enhances page loading speed, positively influencing both user experience and Google’s Core Web Vitals score. To access Open Bidding, you’ll need a Google Ad Manager (GAM) account and a personal AdX account. The revenue-sharing arrangement between the publisher and active SSPs ensures a seamless process, with Google collecting their share from the SSP without directly impacting the publisher’s finances.
Exploring Prebid
Prebid stands out as an open-source header bidding solution, empowering publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple demand sources at once. Boasting both client-side (Prebid.js) and server-side (Prebid Server) solutions, Prebid’s versatility shines. Unlike APS and Open Bidding, Prebid is not a managed service. Instead, it provides publishers with the necessary technological infrastructure for header bidding and leaves the implementation process to the publisher or their AdOps team.
Choosing the Right Path with Amazon’s Programmatic Advertising Solution
APS primarily caters to medium to large-sized publishers, meaning that new and small publishers may need to search for alternative web content monetization options. However, APS offers a significant advantage by enabling publishers to have Amazon itself participate as a bidder. TAM specifically targets larger enterprise publishers, while UAM caters to medium-sized publishers. The key differentiator between Amazon UAM and TAM lies in how they handle SSPs for publishers. TAM assumes that the publisher is already large enough and possesses established individual relationships with SSPs, focusing on centralizing bidding programmatically within the ad marketplace. On the other hand, UAM grants access to Amazon ads along with several SSPs working with Amazon, offering a one-stop-shop where Amazon manages all the relationships between the publisher and the SSPs involved.
Entering Amazon’s Programmatic Advertising
To embark on the journey with APS, publishers must fill out their Contact Form, following which an Amazon representative will get in touch with them. Smaller and medium-sized publishers require a personal invitation from Amazon to participate in APS. For larger publishers with existing header bidding setups and demand partner relationships, getting started with APS is relatively straightforward.
Unified Ad Marketplace: Empowering Publishers
Amazon’s Unified Ad Marketplace (UAM) represents a server-side header bidding wrapper, with the auctions conducted on Amazon’s servers instead of within users’ browsers. UAM supports various ad formats, including:
- Desktop: 728×90, 300×250, 160×600, 300×600, 970×250
- Mobile Web: 300×250, 320×50
- Tablet Web: 728×90, 300×250, 160×600, 300×600, 970×250
Pros and Cons of Unified Ad Marketplace
Unified Ad Marketplace Pros:
- Managed service
- Demand expansion
- Minimal page latency
- Seamless integration with existing header bidding setup
- Unified payments
- Revenue boost
Unified Ad Marketplace Cons:
- Reporting complexity
- Limited transparency
UAM proves extremely beneficial for small to medium-sized publishers, empowering them to monetize their websites with Amazon product ads and tap into alternative demand from various SSPs such as Pubmatic, OpenX, Xandr, and more. Publishers who seek access to SSPs and prefer a managed solution will find UAM to be an ideal choice.
Integrating UAM with GAM
Integrating UAM with Google Ad Manager (GAM) involves four simple steps:
- Access your UAM account.
- Click on “Setup,” then “Set Up GAM.”
- Add a new GAM account and follow the instructions to connect UAM and Ad Manager. If you only wish to integrate your website with UAM, you can proceed to “Resources,” then “Add JavaScript,” and finally “Integrate UAM alone.” Copy and paste the required JavaScript code into your site’s header.
Transparent Ad Marketplace: Tailored to Enterprise Publishers
Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) represents Amazon’s invitation-only server-side header bidding solution designed for enterprise publishers with substantial exchanges. TAM requires publishers to have direct agreements with SSPs like Amazon and independently manage the setup. Each bidder’s payments are handled individually.
To utilize TAM, publishers must actively integrate the APS multi-slot header bidding tag and establish written agreements with their desired demand partners.
Pros and Cons of Transparent Ad Marketplace
Transparent Ad Marketplace Pros:
- Zero fees
- Extensive demand scope
- Full transparency in reporting
- Enhanced control over partnerships
Transparent Ad Marketplace Cons:
- Managing multiple payments
- Implementation complexity
- Limited demand reach
Ideal for large publishers with established direct demand connections, TAM empowers publishers to maintain control by directly engaging with SSPs and managing the setup and optimization process.
UAM vs. TAM: Compare and Choose Wisely
Both TAM and UAM operate as server-side header bidding solutions, conducting auctions on the server rather than in the user’s browser. Although they share this fundamental characteristic, the key difference lies in how they handle publisher-SSP interactions.
While UAM acts as a middleman between publishers and demand partners, TAM positions Amazon as a demand partner. Publishers engaging with TAM can directly contact Amazon or connect with SSPs, handling the technical integration of header bidding, setup, and optimization themselves.
In summary, UAM benefits publishers requiring access to SSPs and a managed solution, while TAM caters to larger publishers with established direct demand connections. The disparity is further reflected in how Amazon handles payments. Publishers using TAM receive payments individually from the relevant SSPs as well as APS for Amazon demand. Meanwhile, publishers utilizing UAM enjoy consolidated monthly payments directly from APS.
Three main differences distinguish the two solutions:
- Centralization: UAM streamlines connections between all parties, facilitating seamless transactions, while TAM prioritizes providing transparency and visibility into advertising transactions.
- Information availability: UAM restricts access to ad transaction details for selected parties, whereas TAM ensures full transparency by divulging information on ad inventory, prices, and terms.
- Objective: UAM facilitates efficient buying and selling of ads, making it highly convenient for all parties involved. In contrast, TAM places greater emphasis on transparency and accountability, ensuring fairness for all stakeholders.
Ultimately, both UAM and TAM contribute to enhancing the ad industry’s efficiency and effectiveness, although they achieve these goals through different approaches.
Server-side vs. Client-side vs. Hybrid Header Bidding Demystified
Client-side header bidding occurs within the user’s web browser, leveraging Prebid JavaScript (JS) code added to the website’s source code. This initiates multiple ad requests to participating demand partners, culminating in an auction where the highest bidder wins.
Server-side header bidding operates similarly, except the auction takes place on the server instead of the user’s browser. A single request is sent to the server, which then sends out multiple requests to SSPs and ad exchanges. Bidders respond swiftly, independent of the user’s browser.
Hybrid header bidding is a combination of client-side and server-side methods. By adopting this approach, publishers harness the benefits of both client-side and server-side header bidding. The list of demand sources with comparatively weaker performance competes on the server side, while top-performing SSPs and ad exchanges partake in the client-side auction. The hybrid approach merges bids from both auctions, optimizing fill rates, CPMs, and advertiser competition while maintaining fast loading times and user data.
In general, hybrid header bidding reduces page load times and eases the processing burden on users’ browsers while enabling publishers to connect with a broader range of advertising demand sources. Server-side header bidding is particularly advantageous for demand partners focusing on brand recognition, while client-side options suit those aiming to target audiences and boost bids using specific data such as cookies and visitor profiles.
Pros and Cons of Server-side and Client-side Header Bidding
As a publisher, it’s crucial to test both server-side and client-side header bidding solutions, assessing the outcomes to determine the optimal approach for your specific needs. The data produced from this evaluation will ultimately point to the most suitable solution.
Unlock the Full Potential with Setupad’s Header Bidding Solution
Setupad proudly offers a sophisticated hybrid header bidding wrapper, combining the best bids from the client side with server-side bidding to optimize revenue without compromising speed. Our header bidding solution incorporates server-to-server (S2S) connections to Prebid.js server, Google’s Open Bidding, and Amazon Transparent Marketplace (TAM). Utilizing these S2S integrations has led to 35% of winning auctions.
By partnering with Setupad, publishers gain access to a simple and streamlined ad tag implementation, high-quality ads from premium demand partners, and predefined blocklists that effectively filter out undesirable and low-quality ads. Our aim is to provide publishers with an efficient and hassle-free header bidding solution, equipped with cutting-edge technology, programmatic expertise, and personalized support.
To explore the benefits of our solution and embark on your header bidding journey, sign up or reach out to us at [email protected].
