The Washington Post bolsters publisher-led innovation by joining Prebid.org

The Washington Post has announced it will join Prebid.org as a Technology Partner, bringing its world-class engineering resources and industry expertise to accelerate innovation for the open-source digital advertising software.

“The Washington Post has long been at the forefront of ad tech innovation, pushing the industry forward by prioritizing speed and viewability in the name of a creating a superior user experience for all — readers, brands and publishers,” said Kodi Foster, vice president of commercial technology at The Post. “We’re excited to bring our rich learnings in this space to the Prebid community, helping democratize the conversation about the future of ad tech with the goal of creating a sustainable and ethical business model based on quality journalism.”

Since 2019, The Post has made its proprietary Zeus Performance software commercially available to publishers, including built-in optimizations for viewability and load speed along with its patent-pending rendering engine, serving more than 100 publishers across the U.S. The Zeus Performance engineering team will begin contributing its innovations to the entire publisher community supported by Prebid and Performance customers will be able to adopt the open-source technology.

“With Zeus, we’ve always been focused on helping publishers succeed in an industry that is complex and fast-moving. With Prebid.org, we saw an opportunity to amplify the publisher point of view with maximum impact, combining Zeus’ expertise in increasing ad quality with the rapid change delivered through Prebid.org’s open innovation model,” said Julia Belanger, Zeus Technology GM. “Now we can help publishers set the agenda for their ad tech partners while also continuing to help them grow their revenue through Zeus Prime which will be accessible to a wider publisher community.”

Zeus Prime, a groundbreaking premium ad-buying network that connects brands and top U.S. publishers in a real-time marketplace, made its early access debut last fall with an initial slate of supply- and demand-side partners including The Dallas Morning News and the Ad Council. In the months ahead, Prime will double down on its strategy to serve local publishers by expanding into select media markets to more deeply engage local advertisers and publishers.

“Prebid.org is excited to welcome The Washington Post as a new member of the organization,” said Mike Racic, president at Prebid.org. “This new addition further extends our reach across the publisher community and will enable even more publishers to have a voice within prebid as we continue our mission of enabling a sustainable ad supported digital eco-system.”