---
title: "Sure, Debates Between Prebid Members Can Get Heated. That’s Why It’s The Programmatic Melting Pot"
url: https://adtech.lol/articles/1ccc294e-65ce-4ea5-8055-63e721601498
source_url: https://www.adexchanger.com/publishers/sure-debates-between-prebid-members-can-get-heated-thats-why-its-the-programmatic-melting-pot/
source_site: adexchanger
author: "AdExchanger Staff"
published: 2026-10-15T16:00:00+00:00
tags: ["column", "prebid", "Prebid Summit"]
publisher: AdTech Radar
---

# Sure, Debates Between Prebid Members Can Get Heated. That’s Why It’s The Programmatic Melting Pot

> The Prebid Summit in New York City showcased the vibrant, and often heated, discussions among members about the future of programmatic advertising, reflecting both collaboration and tension within the field.

The Prebid Summit in New York City on Tuesday exceeded the event’s reputation for liveliness.

That reputation was cemented last year, when the Prebid Summit was roiled by controversy after The Trade Desk had forked the main Prebid code due to a data collection disagreement over how to handle programmatic Transaction IDs.

TTD’s presence at last year’s show – complete with a main stage keynote from TTD CEO Jeff Green – was itself controversial. It represented Prebid, which started as a publisher-oriented organization, getting more comfortable with buy-side stakeholders. Meanwhile, Prebid and the IAB Tech Lab were navigating a fraught moment as Prebid grew its own open-source online ad standards – which was traditionally the Tech Lab’s turf.

A year later, Prebid remains one of the finest remaining crucibles in programmatic. Allies, rivals and frenemies all jostle together in a constantly changing mix of antagonism and support. Products ship and people are either elated, nonplussed or furious.

And the Prebid Summit is where metal meets rock and sparks fly. But that’s how we end up with fire. Which all seems rather grandiose. But hear me out.

### Grappling with GAM

As one keen example of what I mean, consider a working group breakout session from this year’s Prebid Summit that AdExchanger attended. In the room was a score or so of true Prebid contributors, all JavaScript natives who were there to haggle over the fine minutiae of how a Prebid ad server might integrate with Google Ad Manager.

Brian Sardo, a Microsoft Advertising engineer, was there to pitch the working group’s version of how this ad server setup should work. But there was a boisterous flow of argument and criticism (in the old-fashioned sense of literary or art criticism, meaning informed, well-meaning appraisals, rather than tearing down).

Sardo couldn’t even finish his presentation due to all the cross-talk. But he wasn’t fussed. He kept emphasizing that the debate is exactly the point of the presentation. And, after all, the group is moving forward with a proposal he supports.

Only at the end of the session did this reporter realize it was Joel Meyer, Prebid board chairman and OpenX CTO, whose alternate proposal was losing out.

So it goes in Prebid Land.

But that wasn’t the only example of Prebid as the programmatic melting pot or crucible on display in the session. At one point during the discussion, Patrick McCann, SVP of research at Raptive and chair of Prebid’s JavaScript working group, noted that Googlers were there in the room. 

That didn’t stop members of the group, by the way, from seriously pressing the idea of whether and how Prebid ought to prepare for GAM to evade the remedies to its ad tech monopoly set by US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema.

There were scattered moments of confusion, too, about how GAM was legally required to integrate with Prebid, along with sideways glances at the GAM delegation (which, for its part, maintained a friendly but stoic silence throughout).

Hillary Slattery, a product leader at the IAB Tech Lab, was in the breakout session as well, pressing for a server-side overhaul of the programmatic supply side and exhorting the group to adopt the Tech Lab’s Trusted Server tech. Count it as another example of Prebid’s interests overlapping with the Tech Lab’s.

### The specter of iOS 27

On the main stage, too, the Prebid Summit featured some unexpected and sometimes feisty panel mixes.

Ryan Teshima-McCormick, chief business officer of MediaWallah, addressed how the panel’s intended discussion had been thrown by Apple’s iOS 27 update, which ominously blocks some of the largest online identity and data companies from operating on Apple devices that have the new iOS version installed.

Two other companies on the panel, LiveRamp and ID5, were among those unconditionally blocked by Safari WebKit in the iOS 27 update. The other panelists, Experian and 33Across, were likewise trying to adjust to a potential new world without data collection or ad targeting on Apple hardware.

“For everyone in this room that’s been trying to understand and manage their data partnership strategies, specifically as it pertains to signals, while literally the ground is moving under our feet,” Teshima-McCormick said, “I think it’s important to just throw it to anyone on our panel here that would want to share any advice on how to navigate.”

Not that either representative from ID5 or LiveRamp gave their candid opinion on stage, mind.

But another fun thing about Prebid Summit is the opportunity to overhear calls and private discussions between executives as they fight to hold or gain share amid upheavals like the iOS change or Publicis’ acquisition of LiveRamp. It’s a far cry from the usual blasé conference small talk.

For instance, I happened to come across a quiet aside between The Trade Desk GM of Product Mike O’Sullivan and ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche. “Is it just grief or personal grief?” O’Sullivan asked Roche – at which point the conversation came to an abrupt end at my arrival. Who knows what they were discussing.

### Even the pettiness is illuminating

But conversations everywhere at the Prebid Summit tend to be a moment away from getting heated.

Far more publicly, O’Sullivan was involved in one such heated exchange when he and Ian Meyers, the co-founders of Sincera who were acquihired by The Trade Desk last year, hosted a live podcast discussion with Brian O’Kelley, CEO of Scope3, and Index Exchange product VP Michael Richardson.

The podcast was ostensibly about the history of Prebid. O’Sullivan, Richardson and O’Kelley are old AppNexus hands and were around to see the early incarnations of the organization back when it was an AppNexus product.

But O’Kelley probably made the Trade Deskers regret the invite, calling out TTD for having “f***ing forked” Prebid a year ago. “Thank you for not contributing,” he said. “Thank you for trying to split off your own motivation and do something worse for this community. You two did it.”

“Brian, always a pleasure chatting with you,” O’Sullivan demurred in response. 

But, when pressed by O’Kelley over “having the nerve to come on-stage and talk about innovation” in the Prebid community, O’Sullivan gamely took the bait by asking O’Kelley if he had a specific question about TTD’s innovations. He then pivoted to highlight the DSP’s contributions to the publisher side.

That’s the kind of fraught but illuminating interaction that’s become rare at ad tech events. And for my money, it’s a good thing for programmatic to have a place in Prebid where tense and difficult questions are stared down, even uncomfortably, and a decision is made.

I hope it doesn’t change.

Source: [https://www.adexchanger.com/publishers/sure-debates-between-prebid-members-can-get-heated-thats-why-its-the-programmatic-melting-pot/](https://www.adexchanger.com/publishers/sure-debates-between-prebid-members-can-get-heated-thats-why-its-the-programmatic-melting-pot/)