Ads were the easy part once I stopped trying to run the ad containers and servers myself. When I started it was long waterfall chains of terrible javascript loaders which ended at Google typically. When header bidding came out it made the advertising world orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers.
> orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers.
Well, not end users. They're getting ads.
But I would assume that ad buyers and publishers have exclusive improvements. After all, it's not like the ad companies took a substantially smaller cut. It either lowers the cost to ad buyers or it increases the revenue to publishers. Since it's pretty much the same number, it doesn't seem both can be true.
I think advertising is a powerful way to support 'free'ish content and there are ways to use advertising tastefully. People who don't want to participate have options to opt out and are obviously welcome to not make server requests.
When I say 'end user' I guess I am talking about the sheer amount of Javascript loading and computation they no longer had to put up with jumping through waterfalls. Header bidding fixed that which meant that javascript based ads loaded in a significantly more efficient and sane way. Privacy, etc is obviously a different issue.
Don't be dense. If you pay $5 per conversion, and earn $10 per conversion, you make $5 profit as an ad buyer. What happens if you have 2 conversions? 3? 20? You make more profit.
Alternatively think about the flipside, how in the world could you possibly think having a lower conversion rate is good for the ad buyer? A 0% rate?
If you pay $5 per conversion, it doesn't matter if you have 100 impressions per conversion or 10 impressions per conversion. You are pretty conversion rate insensitive.
I mean, obviously it's different at the extremes like 0% vs 100%, but I doubt header-bidding produces that great an effect.
