Dive Brief:

• Google announced in a blog post that Exchange Bidding will now be available for all DoubleClick for Publishers users. The rollout includes new reporting capabilities that aim to give publishers better insights and transparency into ad partners' performance, which can enable faster and smarter decision-making so publishers get the best value from each ad impression. 
• Google also named new exchange partners, Triplelift and Aerserv, and said that the number of exchange partners is now more than 10. The post noted how partners are benefiting from Exchange Bidding: RhythmOne has seen a 40% programmatic revenue increase, and access to higher quality inventory led to cookie match rates above 80%. Index Exchange also reported a 40% increase in revenue from mobile apps.
• Exchange Bidding will be expanded into more ad formats, including video ads, and transaction types, including programmatic deals. Both are currently in closed alpha testing and will be released to beta over the next few months, Google said. 

Dive Insight:

Google's introduction of Exchange Bidding comes as a response to the increasing popularity of header bidding, which allows multiple demand sources to bid on a publisher's ad inventory simultaneously with the publisher then getting to call whichever bid would offer the most yield and revenue, as Digiday explained. In Exchange Bidding, multiple exchanges compete with one another and with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a combined auction. With the tool, Google intends to give publishers a more robust view of their exchange partner's performance and a smoother billing and payment process.

"Header bidding represented the biggest threat to the incumbent Google dominance in the advertising technology marketplace," Justin Kennedy, COO of Sonobi, said in a statement to Marketing Dive. "Ultimately, it forced them to unify the auction and to roll out a product that did not give them a blatant, unfair advantage."

More marketers are embracing these types of programmatic technologies, finding automation and targeting features attractive. By 2019, nearly two-thirds of all digital display ads will be programmatic, potentially reaching $84.9 billion in revenue, according to Publicis Groupe Zenith projections. Global programmatic ad sales are growing 21% annually, with the U.S. driving most of the growth.

Google has been focusing its efforts on offering publishers and advertisers a higher-quality and more transparent approach to programmatic buying in a space that has been plagued with transparency issues and inefficiencies. Google DoubleClick last fall partnered with Rubicon Project to integrate its Private Marketplace deals into the Bid Manager interface.