Index Exchange vs Prebid

Intelligence, Meet Impression: What Sell-Side Decisioning Means for Programmatic Advertising

New blog post from Index Exchange discussing sell-side decisioning in programmatic advertising, published Oct 23, 2026.

Ad industry tallies early losses from Apple Safari tracking block

Apple's latest Safari update has blocked tracking technologies used by major ad tech vendors, causing early revenue losses for publishers. Aditude reported a 10.5% drop in eCPMs among updated users, with Safari accounting for 11.7% of ad impressions and 11.4% of ad revenue for its clients. The impact is currently limited as only 8% of users have updated, but fears grow ahead of Q4. Some publishers with subscription models are less affected, while others worry about dependencies on blocked vendors. Apple's lack of communication and perceived favoritism towards its own ad network have drawn criticism. Index Exchange remains unaffected but calls the move an overreach. The Trade Desk's ad server was blocked but temporarily restored in a test version after a bug report.

• Apple's Safari update blocked tracking technologies used by major ad tech companies.
• Aditude reported eCPMs fell 10.5% among users with the update, impacting publishers' revenue.
• Safari accounts for 11.7% of ad impressions and 11.4% of ad revenue for Aditude's clients.

Index Exchange CEO: Sell-Side Innovation, CTV Transparency, AI Agents

In an interview with ADZINE, Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, discusses the evolution of programmatic advertising. He argues that sell-side innovation, including modeling and containerization, is increasing complexity but also value. Buyers can now run their own models on the sell-side, democratizing decision-making. Casale addresses the black box concern, noting that while the internal logic of buyer models is opaque, the platform observes their actions. He highlights the shift towards modular infrastructure, with Index enabling data providers and DSPs to run modules on its cloud. Regarding CTV, Casale emphasizes the need for more transparency, noting that while genre data is increasingly available, show and episode data remain limited due to legal and distribution issues. He discusses the evolution of pod serving and the role of agentic advertising, distinguishing between workflow automation and impression-level decisioning, which remains the domain of mathematical models. Casale sees AI agents as useful for automating manual tasks but not as a revolution that will shift power from walled gardens.

• Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, discussed sell-side innovation, CTV transparency, and AI agents in an interview.
• Index Exchange processes around 20 million requests per second.
• Most of Index Exchange's CTV supply includes genre data; show and episode data are often kept for direct deals.

Getting Paid in the AI Era: A Field Guide to the New Monetization Models

Article by Anton Nashkerskyi (Sigma Software) and Krish Arvapally (Dappier), for the Prebid LLM Taskforce. Part of the publisher series. Earlier articles in this series covered AI traffic and …

Prebid.js 11.46.0: CI workflows upgraded to Node 24

Prebid.js, the open-source header bidding wrapper, has released version 11.46.0, which updates its CI (Continuous Integration) workflows to use Node 24-based checkout action v6. Specifically, the bounded-qwen-review.yml and open-code-review.yml workflows were migrated to the newer checkout action. This technical release focuses on infrastructure improvements, ensuring compatibility with the latest Node.js runtime for automated code review processes. No functional changes to the ad serving library were included. This release is part of Prebid.js's ongoing maintenance and modernization of its development tooling.

• Prebid.js released version 11.46.0 on October 30, 2026.
• CI workflows bounded-qwen-review.yml and open-code-review.yml were moved to Node 24-based checkout action v6.
• The release is tagged by patmmccann.

Prebid.js 11.44.0 adds priority bids support

Prebid.js has released versions 11.44.0 and 11.45.0, introducing significant features and improvements. Version 11.44.0 centers on priority bids (allowPriorityBids opt-in, bid.priority, priority-adjusted ranking), enabling publishers to influence auction outcomes. It also includes core enhancements like hardened layout calculations, caching layout reads, using multibid's originalRequestId, and resetting GPT targeting after BID_WON. New bid adapters were added: Roockmobile, VisionForgeX, MonetiseUp, Onebidtech, Adhouse, and Shopnomix. Version 11.45.0 adds house bids (zero-CPM) from priority-enabled adapters, an option for bidder-specific supply chain replacement (firstPartyData.replaceGlobalSchain), late CMP API support, and better reset handling. It also improves error recovery in the currency module for malformed rates, allows video auctions to complete when cached bids are discarded, and includes a new Publink.io adapter. Maintenance includes OpenRTB migration for Yieldlab and bug fixes.

• Prebid.js 11.44.0 (Oct 24, 2026) introduced priority bids (allowPriorityBids opt-in, bid.priority, priority-adjusted ranking).
• Prebid.js 11.45.0 (Oct 28, 2026) added house bids (zero-CPM) from priority-enabled adapters and option firstPartyData.replaceGlobalSchain.
• New bid adapters: Roockmobile, VisionForgeX, MonetiseUp, Onebidtech, Adhouse, Shopnomix (11.44.0) and Publink.io (11.45.0).