OpenX in 2014

May 15th, 2018 marked the ten year anniversary of OpenX becoming incorporated in the U.S. This post is part of a series looking back at each of the ten years in the company’s history – Part 7 of 10

Looking back to 2014, this year marked a huge milestone for the larger programmatic advertising ecosystem. eMarketer produced their first ever estimates for US programmatic ad spending, and found that market was at $10 billion, accounting for nearly 50% of digital advertising dollars.

2014 also marked the year that OpenX formally introduced a new product that fundamentally changed how publishers sold their inventory – header bidding.

Header bidding revolutionized programmatic buying. The technology created a new way for publishers that use Google’s DFP ad server (more than 80% of the market) to increase competition and maximize the value of their inventory by opening up access to their inventory for more buyers and advertisers. Most importantly, this new technology allowed independent ad exchanges to compete against Google, increasing transparency and fairness industry wide.

While ‘header bidding’ the name didn’t catch on until a year or so later, the momentum behind the product and the results it drove for publishers, pushed the entire business forward, making 2014 a year of huge financial success. The company had its first $1M net revenue day in September of 2014, surpassed $100M in total net revenue for the year, and kicked off four straight years of profitability, which continues today.

Along with the rise of header bidding, 2014 was also the year that the company started seeing true dividends from the quality cuts that were made in 2013. Pixalate released their first ever, “Global Seller Trust Index for RTB” and ranked OpenX #1 in traffic quality, reaffirming the significance of decisions made in the previous year.

2014 also marked the year that OpenX formally introduced a new product that fundamentally changed how publishers sold their inventory – header bidding.