In a webinar held on January 14, 2025, Prebid‘s President Mike Racic and Chairman Garrett McGrath, outlined the organization’s achievements in 2024 and set forth a bold vision for 2025. The session highlighted Prebid’s continuous leadership in open-source, open-auction programmatic technology and its innovative strides across various advertising channels.
2024: A Year of Innovation and Growth
2024 was a year where Prebid solidified its leadership in the programmatic sector, seeing substantial growth across its core products and a significant increase in membership.
If you’re passionate about shaping the future of our industry and ensuring your voice is heard, we invite you to join Prebid as a Member. This is your opportunity to contribute directly to our pioneering efforts and make a tangible impact in the programmatic space.
Prebid solidified its position in 2024, focusing on enhancing its core products like JS, Server, and SharedID, while expanding into emerging channels such as Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH), Connected TV (CTV), and audio advertising. Notable achievements include:
- The integration of 40 new bid adapters and the completion of over 960 pull requests on the server side.
- Significant enhancements in JavaScript handling, including consent management and IP masking.
- Advances in mobile with over 1,100 apps adopting the Prebid SDK.
- Pioneering efforts in sustainability practices within programmatic advertising.
Strategic Goals for 2025: Doubling Down on Innovation
Looking ahead, Prebid aims to double down on its core offerings while exploring new avenues for using technology to enhance publisher revenue streams and address market needs.
Key initiatives for 2025 include:
- Further development of SharedID to enhance cross-channel utility.
- Increased emphasis on CTV and audio integrations to cater to evolving consumer media consumption habits.
- Leveraging AI to improve bidding processes and ad delivery.
- Commitment to Industry Leadership and Community Engagement
Prebid is not just innovating products but also fostering a community of contributors and users. The webinar emphasized the organization’s role in providing industry vision, education, and standardization. Plans for 2025 include increased community engagement through training, certifications, and strategic alignments with industry leaders.
Detailed Development Plans per Product
Prebid Server (Bret Gorsline & Brian Sardo)
Mission: Deliver a cross-channel, enhanced, clean and efficient bid stream, enabling a broader and more dynamic marketplace.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Backlog
- Format support (CTV/Audio)
- Module support
Secondary
- Keep up with privacy updates
- Ad podding support
- Optimization
Prebid JS (Patrick McCann & Luke Corrigall)
Mission: Deliver a cleaner and more efficient bid stream, across channels, client-side, enabling a broader and more dynamic marketplace.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Client side minimum bid to win notifications
- Yield on main thread
- Typescript support
- High Priority: expandables, anchors, interstitials, multiple impression trackers
Secondary
- New gpp state strings
- Reduce code weight
- Code quality checks
- Local cache module
- PAAPI negative targeting
Identity/SharedID (Jeff Wieland & Jordan Cauley)
Mission: Provide solutions that address declining signal deprecation and ensure a privacy complaint, publisher-directed and efficient means to leverage identity, within the bid-stream.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Extended Id signals & measurement
- SharediD & Privacy evangelism
- Analytics Adapter modifications and support for EID signals measurement
Secondary
- Additional EID case studies
- Updated Documentation on how to use Prebid Activity Controls
CTV (Catherine Cho & Nikunj Sureka)
Mission: To deliver an open-source, unified auction solution for CTV environments, enhancing monetization opportunities for publishers and Prebid Bidders.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Direct VAST tag based integration to GAM for CTV
- Cost-effective integration alternative (i.e. bidders without tag handling) with smaller set of line items leveraging GAM’s SSU
- Multi-bidding via single VAST with multiple <Ad> elements
Secondary
- Expand to other Ad Servers
- Advanced optimization features; VAST unwrap for validation, VAST enrichment based on data in ORTB responses, Bid selection and ranking
Prebid Mobile (Mike Mullin & Alexander Savelyev)
Mission: Bring header bidding to the in-app environment, providing a transparent and efficient way to programmatically transact and render across standardized units.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- In-App Focused Features, SDK 3.0
- Adding support for click tracking across all formats
- Increased Video support
Secondary
- Increased integration with leading mediation platforms (AppLovin, Unity)
- Increase ability to integrate Prebid SDK into other app tech (ie Flutter, React, etc..)
Prebid Video (Andrew Fowler & Karim Mourra)
Mission: Clean up the video ecosystem by reducing high levels of VAST errors and improving standardization.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Continued improvement of video documentation
- VAST validation module
Secondary
- How to approach reducing VAST errors in the video ecosystem
- Any areas of video documentation that are unclear
- How to increase membership
Measurement (Alexey Stoletny & Geoff Stupay)
Mission: Develop a reusable, efficient, and privacy-preserving framework for measurement at scale.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Conduct live pre-bid signal test:
- Publisher
- SSP
- DSP
- Demonstrate lift to Platforms & Publishers
- Align on widespread adoption
Secondary
- Development of a reusable framework applicable beyond the IVT use case
- Launch of second vendor using measurement framework
Prebid DOOH (Mina Naguib & Nitin Shriram)
Mission: To grow the programmatic marketplace of DOOH.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Grow adoption
- Grow DOOH-capable list of adapters
- Grow DOOH publisher users of PBS
Secondary
- Address industry pain points
- Upload of audience impression multipliers
- Creative approvals
Prebid Audio (Jordan Bentley & Bryan Barletta)
Mission: To deliver an open-source, unified auction solution for Audio and Podcasting environments, enhancing monetization opportunities for creators and independent publishers.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Release of PBS Core integration for Audio / CTV
- VAST Output Module for PBS
- GET Header Module for PBS
Secondary
- VAST Validation Module
- VAST Unwrapping Module
Tools (Chris Huie)
Mission: Provide publishers intelligence about Prebid and its marketplace, so that Publishers have better information to inform the decisions relevant to their business.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Prebid Analytics; data visualizations prebid product adoption
- Professor Prebid to start supporting vendor specific components
Secondary
- Add ability to download the output from Professor Prebid including all Prebid instances found on a page
- Add specific features focused on better supporting Prebid Server and Prebid.js Video
- Add first order usersyncs to Professor Prebid (Sustainability PMC request)
Supply Chain & Sustainability (Stephen Johnston & Ankur Srivastava)
Mission: Elevate the Supply Chain and Sustainability Efficiencies of the Prebid Ecosystem via Education and Tools.
2025 Themes:
Primary
- Traffic Shaping
- Supply Chain Portal
- Tracking Sustainability Evolution
- Grow Participation (Pubs Especially)
Secondary
- Market Responsive Additions to Portal(s)
- Sustainability Vendor
- IAB Engagement
Marketing Updates (Katie Morgart)
In recent years, Prebid’s marketing efforts have significantly expanded, encompassing a diverse range of activities, events, and channels that have greatly enhanced its engagement and visibility within the industry.
For 2025, Prebid has planned an extensive lineup of events designed to connect, educate, and empower its community, see below.
Conclusion
As we move into 2025, Prebid’s commitment to delivering innovative solutions that serve publishers and advertisers alike remains unwavering. With a clear strategy and a community-oriented approach, Prebid is poised to take charge of shaping the future of programmatic advertising.