Header bidding has been top of mind for premium publishers over the past year. Many publishers have adopted the marketing strategy and are seeing significant revenue gains, but due to a lack of education in the market, multiple publishers are unsure if it is right for their business, or they are implementing header bidding without the right expectations.

PubMatic has released new white paper titles, “Lessons Learned in Header Bidding,” that explores how publishers can experience success with header bidding—to drive advertising sales—and what role technology partners play in the pre- and post- implementation phases. We see header bidding as a key part in the ad decisioning evolution paving the way for new innovations, such as wrapper tags (see more in Lesson 6).

Here the five lessons learned, along with a bonus lesson in wrapper solutions.

1. Understand if Header Bidding is Right for You: Take a quick questionnaire to see if header bidding makes sense for your organization.
2. Heed Expectations and Understand the Potential Pitfalls: Before jumping into header bidding, learn about possible challenges that might arise and how to address those challenges.
3. Set Both Short- and Long-Term Expectations in Header Bidding: Learn about typical short- and long-term goals in header bidding and define what success means to your organization.
4. Define Who is in Charge and of What: Learn about the roles and responsibilities needed to effectively implement header bidding, on both the publisher and technology partner side.
5. Test, Test… and Then Test Again: Learn how to optimize header bidding setups to achieve success. In header bidding, testing is everything.
6. Prepare for Wrapper Solutions in 2016: Thinking about what’s next, all publishers (even those without header bidding) should understand what wrapper tag solutions mean to the digital advertising industry.