Index Exchange

Index Exchange Inc. (commonly referred to as Index or IX) is a privately owned, independent ad exchange. It functions as a global advertising marketplace, wherein digital media companies — including Meredith, Condé Nast, and Hearst — sell their ad impressions to programmatic buyers in real-time (Real-time bidding)[1]. Headquartered in both New York City and Toronto, with eleven additional regional offices around the globe, Index says its company mission is to democratize digital advertising.[2]

Index Exchange Inc.
IndustryOnline advertising
Founded2001 (2001)
FounderAndrew Casale
Headquarters
Toronto, Canada
New York City, United States
Key people
Andrew Casale (Founder, President & CEO)
Alex Gardner (CRO)
Neil Dorken (CFO)
Marc Staveley (CTO)
Jason Cicchetti (GC)
Will Doherty (EVP, Global Marketplace Development)
James Prudhomme (EVP, International)
Number of employees
500+
Websitewww.indexexchange.com

Founding & Financing

Index Exchange launched as Casale Media in 2001 as one of the first ad tech startups designed to help marketers manage online inventory.[3]

In 2011, the core of Casale Media’s business pivoted to become a digital ad exchange. As a result, it was renamed Index Exchange in 2015.[3][4] Having made investments in engineering and infrastructure[5], the company has grown and expanded to a team of 500+. It is privately owned and operated by Andrew Casale and his father, Joe Casale.

Products

Header Bidding

In 2015, Index Exchange decided to focus on header bidding, which aimed to redefine standard programmatic practices.[6]

An alternative to the “waterfall” method[6], header bidding created a parallel auction, in which publishers could offer ad space to a near-infinite number of SSPs (supply-side platforms) and advertising exchanges at once. See also: real-time bidding.

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Digiday Research, “Over a third of publisher respondents to Digiday’s survey found that header bidding has increased yield rates by at least 25 percent. Sixteen percent estimated that header bidding has helped boost their yield by 50 percent or more.”[7]

Identity Solutions

Beginning in 2017, Index Exchange placed its focus on building common and open solutions to the industry’s reliance on cookies for the programmatic industry[8], working with DSPs (demand-side platforms) on products like LiveRamp’s IdentityLink[9] and The Trade Desk’s Unified ID solution.[10]

Physical Infrastructure

Physical infrastructure also plays a role in Index Exchange’s business.[11] The company has a team who manages its data centers around the globe, housing thousands of ad servers, which collectively process more than 70 billion daily ad requests.[11]

As explained in a 2017 Adweek article, “Despite the increase of software moving to cloud-based systems, investing in hardware—and bigger and better data centers to safely keep it—is a priority for Index Exchange. Between 2015 and 2016, the firm doubled its investment and is upping this year’s investment by two-and-a-half times, adding more space each time.” The article further explains that Index’s data centers allow the advertising exchange to physically “plug into other ad-tech companies instantly. Index Exchange’s New York cage is plugged into about 30 neighboring cages that belong to DMPs and DSPs.”[11]

Partners

As an advertising exchange, Index Exchange works with partners on both the buy and sell sides of the programmatic industry. At present, its global partners include GroupM[12], Hearst, Meredith, Mail Online, Le Monde, eBay, Condé Nast, Roundel[13], Italia Online, Horizon Media, Target, Mindshare, Unilever, Kimberly-Clark and more.[2]

Employees and Offices

As of May 2020, Index Exchange has more than 500 employees across 13 offices.[2]

Office locations include:

  • Toronto (Engineering HQ)
  • New York (Commercial HQ)
  • San Francisco
  • Montreal
  • Kitchener/Waterloo
  • London
  • Chicago
  • Paris
  • Sydney
  • Dusseldorf
  • Milan
  • Tokyo
  • Boston

Controversy

Bid Caching

In August 2018, Index Exchange revealed they were using a practice called bid caching to optimize their auctions.[14] Bid caching is a process where losing bids from one auction are cached for another auction, leading to buyers purchasing ad space that they did not intend. Index Exchange justified the practice by claiming it was in line with industry guidelines, but their justification cited an unrelated standard[14]: OpenRTB 2.5 section 7.2 was claimed to support bid caching, but the section explains general guidelines for impression expiration.[15] The CEO of London Media Exchange criticized Index Exchange stating, "Bid caching is fundamentally wrong. You're paying for something else. It's like going to [the] supermarket and getting beans, and at checkout, they swap it out for something else".[16] The CTO of the Rubicon Project Tom Kershaw similarly criticized the practice, stating, "Real-time bidding doesn't mean calling it 'sometimes real-time bidding'. The industry is clear on this one".[17]

Index Exchange has since halted its use of bid caching.[18]

Additional References and Resources:
  1. How Index Exchange Prevents Ads From Showing Up on Fake News[19]
  2. Facebook Just Changed the Mobile Web Landscape With Header Bidding[20]
  3. Allied-RioCan's Toronto Complex Lands Index Exchange as a Tenant[21]
  4. Brands Try to Blacklist Breitbart, but Ads Slip Through Anyway[22]
  5. Chase Had Ads on 400,000 Sites. Then on Just 5,000. Same Results.[1]
  6. Index Exchange’s Casale: 'A correction will be driven into the market' [23]
  7. New York Times Pitches Programmatic As Advertisers Clamor For Brand Safety [24]
  8. Pourquoi le header bidding rend les ad exchanges transparents et consolide le marché, d’après A. Casale, d’Index (Interview)[25]
  9. WTF is ads.txt[26]
  10. There's Now A Ridiculous Number Of Companies Competing In The Hottest Area Of Ad Tech [27]
  11. How Index Exchange Rose with the Header[6]
  12. How will the IAB's ads.txt change Canada's ad fraud conversation?[28]
  13. Trust Between Ad Tech and Marketers is the Biggest Challenge in Digital Advertising Today [29]
  14. Vox Media Is Bending To The Wave Of Using Technology To Sell Ads[30]
  15. Digital Supply Chain Maturing Because ‘Marketers Want More’: Index Exchange’s Andrew Casale[31]
  16. What It’s Like to Go Inside a Data Center That Generates $4 Trillion in Business Every Day[11]
gollark: Great! That should mean that my nearly untested change fixes this in OIR™ too!
gollark: I may have to try this for the OIR frontend.
gollark: Yes, it *is* highly æ! Maybe you could stick randomly generated `?bees=12471248172481` query string parameters on the URL to "fix" it.
gollark: *Upcoming* things? How highly advanced.
gollark: Iowa is not, in fact, real.

References
  1. Maheshwari, Sapna (2017-03-29). "Chase Had Ads on 400,000 Sites. Then on Just 5,000. Same Results". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  2. "Home". Index Exchange. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  3. Rogers, Bruce. "First Family Of Ad Tech Disrupts Itself To Achieve Exponential Growth". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  4. "Casale Media Rebrands To Index Exchange To Support Growth In Programmatic". www.mediapost.com. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  5. "Index Exchange expands as ad tech consolidation looms". adage.com. 2018-04-11. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  6. Thursday, Zach Rodgers //; July 27th; Am, 2017-10:00 (2017-07-27). "Podcast: How Index Exchange Rose With The Header". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2020-08-10.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. "Digiday Research: Header bidding and first-price auctions boost publisher revenues". Digiday. 2019-01-14. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  8. Johnson, Lucia Moses, Lauren. "Privacy is going to kill advertising as we know it, putting publishers at risk and strengthening Facebook and Google. Here's what's at stake for each player". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  9. "Enterprise Data Connectivity Platform & Identity Solutions". LiveRamp. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  10. "The Trade Desk and Index Exchange Boast Match Rates of 99 Percent". Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  11. "What It's Like to Go Inside a Data Center That Generates $4 Trillion in Business Every Day". Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  12. Monday, Alison Weissbrot //; March 2nd; Pm, 2020-1:36 (2020-03-02). "GroupM Partners With Index Exchange As Hold Cos Lean Into SSPs". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2020-06-24.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. "Index Exchange Is Partnering with Roundel for First Party Data – Beet.TV". Beet.TV - The Root to the Media Revolution. 2019-09-30. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  14. Pandey, Vasavi (2018-08-15). "Our Commitment to User Experience". Index Exchange. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  15. "IAB Real Time Bidding Project - OpenRTB API Specification Version 2.5 Final" (PDF).
  16. "Bid Caching Explained (+5 Myths About the Practice)". Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  17. Thursday, Sarah Sluis //; August 16th; Pm, 2018-3:02 (2018-08-16). "Index Exchange Called Out For Tweaking Its Auction". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2020-08-14.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. Monday, Sarah Sluis //; August 20th; Pm, 2018-8:51 (2018-08-21). "Index Exchange Halts Bid Caching, Used Auction Game For 50% Of Impressions". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2020-08-14.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  19. "How Index Exchange Prevents Ads From Showing Up on Fake News - Cheddar Archive". Cheddar. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  20. "Facebook Just Changed the Mobile Web Landscape With Header Bidding". adage.com. 2017-03-22. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  21. "Allied-RioCan's Toronto Complex Lands Index Exchange as a Tenant". bloomberg.com. 2018-07-31. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  22. Maheshwari, Sapna (2017-03-26). "Brands Try to Blacklist Breitbart, but Ads Slip Through Anyway". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  23. "Index Exchange's Andrew Casale: 'A correction will be driven into the market'". The Drum. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  24. Tuesday, Sarah Sluis //; May 2nd; Am, 2017-10:16 (2017-05-02). "New York Times Pitches Programmatic As Advertisers Clamor For Brand Safety". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2020-08-10.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  25. "Pourquoi le header bidding rend les ad exchanges transparents et consolide le marché, d'après A. Casale, d'Index (interview)". AD-EXCHANGE.FR * (in French). 2017-05-29. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  26. "WTF is ads.txt?". Digiday. 2017-06-07. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  27. Shields, Mike. "There's now a ridiculous number of companies competing in the hottest area of ad tech". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  28. August 1, Bree Rody; 2017. "How will the IAB's ads.txt change Canada's ad fraud conversation?". Retrieved 2020-08-10.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  29. "Trust Between Ad Tech and Marketers Is the Biggest Challenge in Digital Advertising Today". Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  30. Shields, Mike. "Vox Media is bending to the wave of using technology to sell ads". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  31. "Digital Supply Chain Maturing Because 'Marketers Want More': Index Exchange's Andrew Casale – Beet.TV". Beet.TV - The Root to the Media Revolution. Retrieved 2020-08-10.

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