When buying with Authorized Buyers real-time bidding, one of the most important factors is ensuring that your bid response is participating in the auction. If the bid response participates in the auction, it has a better chance of improving your win rate—the percentage of impressions won out of all bids submitted. However, it’s possible that some of your bids may not win the auction due to bid response filtering.
What is bid response filtering?
Each real-time bid submitted to Authorized Buyers undergoes a screening process before it can enter the live auction. During this process, your bid may be filtered out due to publisher exclusions or incorrect use of the RTB BidResponse protocol. Even if the bid successfully makes it to the live auction, the bid may lose because the bid price was lower than the publisher’s asking price or a competing bid.
There are three categories of filtering:
- Google filtered: First, Google reviews the bid response to determine whether it's in a valid format and the creative is compliant with Google’s policies and standards.
- Publisher filtered: Once the bid response passes Google’s review, it is checked against the publisher’s requirements to ensure that it doesn't violate publisher exclusions.
- Auction filtered: After the bid response passes the Google review and publisher exclusions, the bid competes in the auction. However, the bid does not win the auction if the bid price was set lower than either the publisher’s asking price or a competing bid price.