How Many Adapters Are Enough?

Publication date: 2025-04-10 | Source: PubMag

Header Bidding by Yandex Yandex has taken over almost the entire market in 🇷🇺 Russia. It’s hard to find publishers (though they certainly exist: vc.ru, farpost.ru, and others) that still run ads through their own solutions rather than through AdFox. This level of unification has its advantages. I analyzed a sample of nearly 4,000 websites from HBTracker reports and studied how many header bidding adapters each of them uses. I managed to answer the question that every publisher asks: how many is enough?

🧪 Methodology

I used up-to-date data from HBTracker reports, which reflect the results of scanning websites for advertising technologies. Each report includes information on dozens of potential adapters. For this analysis, only active adapters participating in auctions were selected. The study was conducted individually for each website.

Header bidding adapters are special scripts that allow external advertising systems to participate in an auction for ad placement before the main Yandex ad code is launched.

When a user opens a page, the browser activates the adapters, which send requests to multiple advertising systems to get their bids. After collecting the bids, the system compares them and displays the ad with the highest bid to the user.

📊 Average and Median Number of Adapters

Average number of adapters per site: 8.99. On average, each site integrates 9 different adapters into its Header Bidding auction.
Median value: 9 adapters. The fact that the median equals the average indicates a symmetrical distribution without extreme outliers.

Median value is the number that lies in the middle of an ordered set of values, where half the numbers are smaller and the other half are larger.

Symmetrical distribution means the values are evenly distributed on both sides of the median.

In such cases, the median usually matches the arithmetic mean (although that’s not always true with skewed data). The main advantage of the median is that it’s resistant to outliers—extremely high or low values.

📉 Distribution by Number of Adapters

Each row shows how many sites use the specified number of Header Bidding adapters.

Adapters Websites

Analyzing the distribution of adapter counts across sites revealed the following patterns:

The most common configuration is 12 adapters — used by 472 websites.
More than half of all websites use between 8 and 13 adapters.
Only 159 websites operate with a single adapter — likely niche projects.
Sites with 17 or more adapters are rare.

Most platforms aim to attract as many partners as possible to increase competition for ad inventory.

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🔍 Why It Matters

The number of adapters on a site affects:

Competition in the auction — more SSPs increase the chances of selling inventory at a better price.
Page load speed and stability — too many adapters may negatively impact performance. However, this is more of a logical assumption than a proven fact.
Manageability — working with many partners requires a skilled AdOps team and backend support.

The market is moving toward optimization: finding the right balance between revenue, performance, and transparency.

Inventory Cat Academy: Lecture on Symmetrical Distribution

📎 Conclusion

9 adapters per site is the norm for the Russian web. Most publishers use between 8 and 13 adapters.

💡 Tips for Publishers: How to Use Header Bidding Effectively

Choose relevant adapters instead of chasing quantity. A large number of SSPs doesn't guarantee higher revenue. It's important to test which partners actually win auctions and which ones just slow down the page. For example, image-heavy websites may benefit from AstraLab or Hybrid, while medical portals might consider SlickJump.
Monitor adapter response time. Slow partners delay the auction. Set a timeout of no more than 1000–1200 ms. Despite asynchronous loading, the user may miss your ad if loading is too slow.
Conduct regular audits. Disable ineffective adapters, especially those that rarely win auctions.
Use data tools. Implementing loggers and analytics will help evaluate the effectiveness of each SSP precisely, including win stats and error rates.
Don't be afraid of custom setups. Some publishers successfully apply unconventional solutions — for instance, direct integrations with major DSPs for exclusive partnerships.
Work with platforms that offer transparent analytics. Without accurate data, informed decisions are impossible.

📖 Also Read

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Overview of the Header Bidding Library by Yandex

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Yandex Advertising: Monetization Technologies 2024

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