Ep 2: Deal IDs: how a deal travels through the bid stream

The buyer agreed to six dollars. The bids arrived as open auction.

A deal ID is the code that ties a bid to its deal.

You create a deal in your SSP. It gets an ID, say NEWS zero four two. The buyer adds that ID to a DSP campaign. When a matching impression comes up, the SSP adds a private marketplace object to the OpenRTB bid request, with the deal ID, a six dollar floor and the allowed buyer seat. The DSP bids, and copies the ID into its deal ID field. With Prebid, the ID becomes a key-value in Google Ad Manager, and a higher priority deal line item picks it up. Our buyer had typed zero two four. No match, so every bid looked like open auction.

Pick one live deal. Check the ID is identical in your SSP, the DSP and your ad server.

Next: why your deals underdeliver.