Last year, we posted an optimization series article about auction filtered reasons. The article addressed the definition of auction filtered bids, review the main reasons for being filtered from the auction, and the steps you can take to ensure your ads will not be filtered. For information on how the AdX auction works today, please see this Ad Exchange Auction Model article in our Help Center.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team

Two years ago, we introduced the Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding Optimization Series on the developer's blog with our first post on post-filtered bids. Since then we’ve added tons of new formats and options for buying. Today, we’ll direct you to our Developers site for more information about how the video review process works, how throttling and filtering occur and highlight best practices to ensure smooth delivery.

The first step is to know your video-specific terms. Check out the in-stream video glossary to find definitions for terms with which you’re not familiar. Once you've created your in-stream video ad, you will need to monitor your video ads. The Video Best Practices Guide provides a list of ways to confirm your video ads are serving:

• Creative review process
• Key performance metrics
• Understanding throttling
• Filtering Reasons
• Ensuring delivery
• Resources

Have questions or feedback? Reach out to your Ad Exchange account team.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team

Last year, we introduced the Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding Optimization Series on the developer's blog with our first post on post-filtered bids.

Today, we’ll drill down into one of the filtering reasons: Auction filtered.

We’ll revisit the definition of auction filtered bids, review the main reasons for being filtered from the auction, and the steps you can take to ensure your ads will not be filtered.

Auction Filtered: After the bid response passes the Google and publisher checks, it makes its way to the auction. However, the bid may not win the auction due to one of the following:

1. Outbid in auction
2. Bid was below the minimum threshold
3. Not allowed in private auction

1. Outbid in auction means that your bid was lower than a competitor’s bid and since AdX uses a second-price auction model, the highest bid wins the auction and pays the price of the second highest bid. One way to make sure you are bidding at a competitive price is to implement the new RTB feature for AdX, Real-time Feedback. The feature will give you feedback on auction results in near real-time, including (1) why your bid was filtered (e.g. disapproved ads, product/sensitive category exclusion, outbid in auction, etc.) and (2) what the winning bid price was (if you lost in the previous auction). We include this information in subsequent bid requests sent to your bidder. You can use this information to improve the efficacy of your own bidding by reducing the number of times you are outbid. The creative_status_code field in the proto buffer will reveal the filtering reason. For example, the creative_status_code field may be 79, meaning you were ‘outbid in auction’, whereas 80 and 81 mean your ‘bid was below the minimum threshold’ and ‘not allowed in private auction’ respectively. You can review a complete list of filtering reasons in the creative-status-codes.txt dictionary file.

2. Bid was below the minimum threshold means that your Max CPM (max_cpm_micros in your BidResponse) was lower than the publisher’s min CPM. Specifically, the bid response contained a max_cpm_micros value that was less than the publisher’s minimum_cpm_micros value. Ensure that your bidder understands the minimum_cpm_micros required by the publisher per bid request and bid at or higher than this price if you are interested in the impression, or submit an empty bid if you are not interested in the impression. The minimum_cpm_micros value is listed in the AdSlot section of the bid request. You can review more details in the realtime-bidding-proto.txt file.

3. Not allowed in private auction means that your bid is being filtered for a preferred deal or private auction impression that you were not allowed in. Using the Preferred Deals UI, view Open Offers and consider negotiating your own deal or private auction with publishers of interest.

New! RTB Dashboard is a tool designed to bring greater transparency to you, as a buyer, and help you refine your bidder to produce more efficient bidding and better results for your campaigns. With RTB Dashboard, you have the ability to review the “RTB insights” section which helps you understand which bids are being filtered out and why:

So, what can you do with the information available in ‘Insights’? Two of the most common auction loss reasons and solutions are:

• Outplaced - use real time feedback to analyze which impressions you get outbid on and increase your bid intelligently. The bid request contains the second price cpm in micros of your account currency if your bid won the auction, or the winning bid that must be exceeded to win the auction if your ad did not win. This is only set if your bid participated in the auction.
• Below CPM - Inspect the minimum_cpm_micros field in the bid request and ensure you’re bidding at or above this amount.

For both auction loss reasons you may want to find out more. Under the ‘Action’ column a ‘Details’ link allows you to view the auction loss count aggregated by either publisher domain or your creative ID for the specific auction loss reason.

Have questions or feedback? Reach out to your Ad Exchange account team.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team

In our previous blog posts, we discussed post-filtered bids and disapproved ads. In those posts we recommended integrating tools such as the Creative REST API, Snippet Status Reports, and Publisher Settings File into your bidder as best practices to improve the efficiency of your application.

Today, we'd like to share how to integrate these tools into your setup.

Why implement these tools into your bidder?

As a recap, here are our suggested best practices and why we feel they are beneficial for your bidder:

The Creative REST API is a proactive measure that provides methods for submitting a creative for verification, for checking the status of a creative that you have submitted, and for retrieving a list of all your active creatives before bidding on the creative ad. By using the Creative REST API to submit and manage your campaign creatives, you’re able to ensure that your bidder is better prepared to bid with an approved creative.

If you are unable to implement the Creative REST API, the Snippet Status Report can also help you review and determine the exact reason for which your ad was disapproved. The snippet-status-report-proto.txt file lists all the issues described in the section of the report. The snippet status report will also show ads that are approved or have not yet been checked by our verification system.

Publisher Settings File is a list of exclusions set by AdX publishers that will block bids from winning the auction for their inventory. Buyers should take note of and adhere to these publisher requirements. By leveraging the Publisher Settings File, your bidder can ensure it does not bid on an ad that will be filtered out of the AdX auction due to an exclusion. By only bidding on eligible impressions, you can avoid wasting bids.

How to incorporate these tools into your bidder?

Below is a sample visual representation of how you can integrate the Creative Rest API, Snippet Status Report and Publisher Settings File into your bidder’s logic to maximize the efficiency of your bidder:

1. Upload creatives from your ad repository/server using the Creative REST API.

2. Use the Snippet Status Reports or Creative REST API to periodically find the creative status (APPROVED, DISAPPROVED, NOT_CHECKED). Update the creative status in your ad repository/server. To avoid wasted bid opportunities, ensure that your bidder only returns BidResponses with APPROVED creatives. Creatives with DISAPPROVED or NOT_CHECKED status will not be eligible to compete in auction. Read more about post-filtered bids.

3. Use categorization data from the Snippet Status Reports or Creative REST API to help match creatives during targeting and avoid getting post-filtered. We use two types of categories, product and sensitive.

Product categories (ex. Banking, Real Estate, or Sports) will be identified by a detected_product_category.
Sensitive categories (ex. Dating, Politics, or Religion) will be identified by a detected_sensitive_category.

If a publisher has category exclusions, they will appear in BidRequests within the excluded_product_category and excluded_sensitive_category fields. Your bidder should honor these category exclusions by ensuring that it only returns BidResponses with creatives that are not categorized in an excluded_product_category or an excluded_sensitive_category.

4. Periodically pull the Publisher Settings Files to incorporate publisher exclusions into your targeting engine to minimize the chance of returning creatives that will be blocked by publishers. It might not be feasible to load all publisher data, but you may consider concentrating on the top N publishers on which your creatives run or publishers that you explicitly target. Publisher Settings Files contain valuable information such as excluded_attribute, excluded_product_category, excluded_sensitive_category and excluded_url. See the complete proto file.

Note: In order to reduce the size of the bid request, BidRequests do not contain excluded_url. Therefore, the only way your bidder will know what advertiser URLs the publisher is excluding is through the Publisher Settings Files. Your bidder should honor URL exclusions by ensuring that it only returns BidResponses with creatives that declare click_through_url’s that are not excluded by the publisher.

Have questions or want to enable any of the tools mentioned? Reach out to your Ad Exchange account team.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team

In December, we introduced the Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding Optimization Series on the developer's blog with our first post on post-filtered bids.

Today, we’ll address one of the common causes: Disapproved ads.

We’ll revisit the definition of disapproved ads, review the main reasons for disapproval, and the steps you can take to ensure your ads will not be disapproved.

What is a disapproved ad?
A disapproved ad is an ad in which the bid response is filtered out due to one or more reasons. To determine the reason for which your ad was disapproved, review your snippet status report. The snippet-status-report-proto.txt file lists all the issues described in the <DisapprovalReason> section of the report.

Note: As a proactive measure, the creative REST API provides methods for submitting a creative for verification, checking the status of a creative that you have submitted, seeing disapproval reasons for your submitted creatives, and retrieving a list of all your approved creatives before bidding on the creative ad.

What are the main reasons for an ad being disapproved?
Most disapprovals occur when ads fail to comply with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange policies for content and creative, or data and third-party ad serving.

Content & Creative: DoubleClick Ad Exchange reserves the right to disapprove ads in breach of the content and creative policies outlined in the Google AdWords Advertising Policies and to suspend entire accounts for certain violations. Here are the most common content and creative policy violations that may cause your ad to be disapproved:

Incorrect Destination URL Declaration means the actual destination URL does not match the declared destination URL.

Length of Image Animation means the length of the image animation is longer than allowed.

Adult Image/Video Content means the ad contains adult images or video content.

Landing Page Disabled means the landing page does not conform to Ad Exchange policy.

Pop-Up means the ad causes a pop-up window to appear.

Media Not Functional means that something is wrong with the creative itself. Please preview your third-party ad tag in a browser to make sure it is working properly.

Broken URL means the click through URL does not work properly. Please test your third-party ad tag in a browser to make sure it is working properly.

Data and Third-Party Ad Serving: In order to run ads on the Google Display Network through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, buyers must follow the requirements for third-party ad serving. Here are the most common data and third-party ad serving violations that may cause your ad to be disapproved:

Problem with Click Macro means there is a problem with the way the click macro is used.

Invalid Fourth-Party Call means the ad makes a fourth-party call to a vendor that is not approved. See this list of vendors who are allowed to be on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange platform.

Usage of Locally Shared Objects (LSO) means the creative sets an LSO object.

No Border means the ad had a white or black background and no border.

Blank Creative means the ad serves a blank creative. Please preview your third-party ad tag in a browser to make sure the creative is loading properly.

Incorrect Ad Technology Declaration means the ad technology declaration is not accurate.
Google has an approved list of vendors who are allowed to be on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange platform.

Use of Raw IP means the ad contains a URL that uses a numeric IP address for the domain.
Please make sure to use the domain, and not the IP address.

Remember, each disapproved ad that is filtered out is a valuable impression you’ve missed out on. Therefore, always:

1. Leverage the creative REST API to submit creatives for verification, check the status of a creative that you have submitted, see disapproval reasons for your submitted creatives, and retrieve a list of all your approved creatives before bidding on the creative ad.
2. Review any disapproved ads in the snippet status report.

Have questions or want to enable the creative REST API or review your snippet status report for your disapproved ads issues? Reach out to your Ad Exchange account team.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team

Today we’re launching the Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding Optimization Series on the developer's blog to share updates, best practices and optimization tips with AdX developers. Our goal is to provide knowledge to our clients to help keep their proprietary bidders healthy, successful and evolving. To start things off the first blog post in the series covers post-filtered bids.

When using Ad Exchange, one of the most important factors is ensuring that your bid response is participating in the auction. If the bid response makes it to the auction, it has a better chance at improving win rate: percent of impressions won out of all bids submitted. However, it’s possible that some of your bids may not be entering the auction due to bid response filtering.

We’ll review bid response filters later in this blog entry: what they are, and how to ensure your bid responses are not filtered out. But before we dive in, let’s define bid response filtering.

What is bid response filtering?
Each real-time bid that is submitted to Ad Exchange undergoes a screening process before it can enter the live auction. During this process, your bid may be filtered due to publisher exclusions or incorrect use of the RTB BidResponse protocol. Among other things, we check for malformed URLs, ads that fall into a category the publisher has blocked, or incompatible elements in the bid response (e.g., a buyer who has declared an expandable ads technology vendor, but who has not actually trafficked an expandable ad).

Here is a basic visual representation of the process a bid goes through, including bid response filtering, to make it into the auction and win:

What are the main bid response filters?
As the bid response progresses through the process illustrated above, it might be filtered out by Google, the publisher, or during the actual auction for many different reasons. Each of the main bid response filtering mechanisms are discussed in detail below.

Google Filtered: First, Google will review the bid response to determine if both the ad creative and bid are compliant with Google’s policies and standards. Here are the most common reasons your bid response will be filtered out by Google:

Disapproved ad means that the ad in the bid response was disapproved due to one of several reasons. In order to determine the exact reason for which your ad was disapproved, review your snippet status report. The snippet-status-report-proto.txt file lists all the issues described in the <DisapprovalReason> section of the report. This is usually the culprit when your bid has been filtered out!
Note: The snippet status report will also show ads that have not been checked and are filtered.
And as a proactive measure, the creative REST API provides methods for submitting a creative for verification, for checking the status of a creative that you have submitted, and for retrieving a list of all your active creatives before bidding on the creative ad.

Max CPM is 0 or negative means the bid (max_cpm_micros) set in the bid response was 0 or a negative value. Change the bid to a positive value. If you are not interested in bidding for a particular bid request, be sure to return an empty bid response with the processing time set, not just an empty (0 bytes) response.

Click through URL is too short means for bid responses where html_snippet is set, the click_through_url is less than eleven characters. For example, the URL http://a.b would be too short. Verify that your click_through_url is more than eleven characters.

Click through URL is unparsable means the click_through_url in the bid response is malformed and cannot be parsed. For example, 'http://myad' will not work, since the domain name has to include at least one '.' (period).

Incorrect use of bid response protocol means that there is an improper setting in the BidResponse. In order to determine the proper protocol, review Building the Response and the realtime-bidding.proto.txt file. The realtime-bidding.proto.txt file defines the appropriate settings that should be included in the BidResponse. Examples of incorrect protocol use include: buyer_creative_id not set in the BidResponse or setting both the html_snippet and video_url fields in the BidResponse (only one should be set).

Poor landing page quality means that the landing page was disapproved by Google. Review the landing page of the ad to make sure the website provides a good user experience as measured by:

• Relevant and original content: The site needs to be relevant and have original content, it should not copy text from another site. 
• Transparency: The site needs to be very clear on what the business model is and what the information will be used for. 
• Ease of navigation: The site should be easy to navigate and it should not be intrusive to users. 

Publisher Filtered: Once the bid makes it through Google’s review, it is reviewed again to ensure it adheres to the publisher’s requirements. For each piece of ad inventory, the publisher can add exclusions. Here is a list of the main reasons a bid could be filtered by a publisher:

Sensitive category URL excluded means that the click_through_url in your bid response was either detected or declared with a sensitive category which was excluded by the publisher for this request. In order to determine the sensitive categories for each publisher, you will need to review the excluded_sensitive_category field in the bid request and the publisher settings report. The publisher-settings-proto.txt file lists the categories that are excluded. Your snippet status report will show the sensitive category with which your snippet’s click_through_url was classified by Google.

Product category URL excluded means that the click_through_url in your bid response was either detected or declared with a product category that has been excluded by the publisher for this request. In order to determine the product categories prohibited by each publisher, review the excluded_product_category field in the bid request and the publisher settings report. The publisher-settings-proto.txt file lists the categories that are excluded. Your snippet status report will show the product category with which your snippet’s click_through_url was classified by Google.

Declared vendors excluded means the bid response has declared a vendor_type which has been excluded by the publisher’s ad slot in the bid request. In order to determine the vendor types allowed by each publisher, review the allowed_vendor_type field in the bid request and the publisher settings report. The publisher-settings-proto.txt file will show you the allowed vendors.

Declared attributes excluded means the bid response has declared attributes which were excluded by the publisher’s ad slot in the bid request. In order to determine the allowed_vendor_type per publisher, you will need to review the excluded_attribute field in the bid request and the publisher settings report. The publisher-settings-proto.txt file will list the excluded attributes. 

Auction Filtered: After the bid response passes the Google and publisher reviews, it makes its way to the auction. However, the bid may not enter the auction if it was lower than the publisher’s required min CPM. If this is the case, a ‘Max CPM is lower than the publisher’s min CPM’ message will be generated.

Max CPM is lower than the publisher’s min CPM means the bid response contained a max_cpm_micros value that was less than the publisher’s min_cpm_micros setting. Ensure your bidder reviews the min_cpm_micros required by the publisher per bid request in order to bid properly on the impression. The min_cpm_micros value is listed in the AdSlot section of the bid request, you can review more details in the realtime-bidding-proto.txt file. 

Remember, each bid response that is filtered out is a valuable impression you’ve missed out on. Therefore, always review the following:

1. Disapproved ads in the snippet status report 
2. Excluded dimensions in the publisher settings report 
3. Publisher’s min CPM requirement in the bid request 

Have questions or want to get a report for your bid response filtering issues? Reach out to your Ad Exchange account team.

Posted by the Ad Exchange Team