Custom models and bidder operate closer to the impression on dedicated infrastructure, enabling more efficient and scalable programmatic buying
Bedrock Platform today debuted the world’s first containerised demand-side platform (DSP), hosting an instance of its bidder atop Index Exchange’s Index Cloud infrastructure.
The integration introduces a new model for how DSPs host their bidders at scale on the open internet, reshaping the compute economics of programmatic buying while preserving the independent roles of DSPs, SSPs, agencies, and media owners.
By containerising its ad decisioning and running its bidder atop Index Cloud, Bedrock can operate more cost efficiently, participate across a broader share of available opportunities, mitigate the loss of reach created by downstream QPS constraints, and significantly reduce the overhead typically associated with operating at scale. The result is a shift in the cost curve of programmatic buying, reducing the dependency between infrastructure spend and market access.
“Scale shouldn’t be limited to the largest DSPs,” said Shane Shevlin, co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Platform. “By running our bidder closer to the impression, we can participate across a broader share of available opportunities and compete on decisioning and performance rather than infrastructure.”
While running its bidder within Index Cloud, Bedrock maintains full control over its decisioning and bidding, with its platform and strategy remaining fully its own.
A group of leading independent agencies, including InterMedia Group and Bay Street Media, and the advanced marketing platform Navigator are among the first to test the integration. These partners are exploring how custom models can be deployed closer to the impression, enabling more responsive decisioning without the traditional limitations of throttling or traffic shaping.
As programmatic buying shifts toward AI-driven decisioning, the ability to evaluate each impression in real time is becoming increasingly important. When systems limit how many opportunities can be assessed, they also limit how effectively models can perform. By enabling buyers to evaluate a much broader set of impressions at the moment they become available, this approach creates a more complete environment for AI-driven optimisation.
“This is about enabling AI to actually do its job,” said David Nyurenberg, SVP of Digital at InterMedia Group. “In an AI-first world, performance comes down to evaluating and scoring every opportunity in the moment. If you can only see a fraction of the market, your models are inherently constrained. This creates an environment where each impression can be properly assessed and prioritised based on its likelihood to drive an outcome, which is a meaningful shift for performance advertisers.”
“We are at the outset of a structural shift in programmatic,” said Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange. “When intelligence moves closer to the impression, the constraints that have historically limited scale begin to fall away. What emerges is a more efficient, more performant, and more powerful open internet.”
