Ep 8: Why Ad Manager and your SSP never agree

Ad Manager says one hundred thousand impressions. Your SSP says ninety-three thousand.

A discrepancy is the gap between two systems counting the same ads.

Both can be right. They count at different moments. On news.example, Google Ad Manager counts when it serves the Prebid line item. The SSP counts later, when its ad renders. If the reader leaves first, or the cached bid expires, only Ad Manager counts it. Next, time zones. Ad Manager uses your network’s, some SSPs use UTC, so days end at different moments. Then filtering. The SSP removes invalid traffic before it pays. And revenue. Ad Manager shows your price bucket, say one dollar fifty. The SSP pays the actual bid, minus its fee. Google says third-party gaps up to twenty percent are common.

Compare same dates, same time zone, impressions first. Agree a threshold with each partner.

Next, testing a new demand partner with holdouts.