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Overview
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Ghost Bidding
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is a testing framework
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designed to measure the incremental impact of
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media buys without
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incurring the cost of control group impressions.
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Within this
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Beeswax uses the control group to analyze if there was a difference in conversion rates between users who were exposed to the Ad versus those who were not. It then generates an Incremental Lift analysis for the advertising run that can be seen in the Incrementality Report available under Reporting.
Conversion is the desired action that a user takes after seeing your ad such as making an online purchase, signing up for a mailing list, subscribing to a service, and so on. Conversion rate is the ratio of conversions to impressions delivered, shown as a percentage.
Additionally, Ghost Logs are available for users who wish to run elements of the Ghost Bidding methodology by themselves.
Benefits
Ghost Bidding helps advertisers to know if their ads are effective in driving up their conversion rates.
Prior to Ghost Bidding, advertisers used to split their customers into two groups, Treatment, and Control, where the treatment group was shown the advertiser’s ads and the control group was shown PSAs (Public Service Announcements). The testing method was used to evaluate the ads' effectiveness; however, advertisers were responsible for serving the PSAs. Ghost Bidding gives the opportunity to use a testing method evaluating ads effectiveness but without having to spend media dollars on PSA ads.
framework, certain bids are
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excluded from auctions and designated as "ghost bids." These ghost bids do not win auctions, but are still tracked for testing purposes. Buyer Cloud predicts whether these ghost bids would have won the auction if they had been included. If the system forecasts that a ghost bid would have won, it generates a corresponding "ghost impression." These ghost impressions effectively create a control group consisting of users who are treated as though they had been exposed to the ad, even though they did not actually see it.
Using this control group, Buyer Cloud compares the conversion rates of users who saw the ad with those who did not. This allows for an analysis of the incremental lift, which reveals how much of the observed conversion behavior can be attributed to the ad exposure itself, as opposed to other factors. The results of this analysis are available in the Incrementality Report, which can be accessed through Reporting. For those interested in more granular control, ghost logs are also available. These logs provide transparency into the ghost bidding process, offering detailed data for those who wish to experiment with or refine elements of the methodology.
How Ghost Bidding Works
Treatment and Control Group Assignments
- Ghost bidding assigns 80% of users
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- to a treatment group (real bids) and 20% of users
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- to a control group (ghost bids).
- Bid requests get assigned a user index (1 to 1000) using a hash based on the User ID type.
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- Requests with a user index from 1 to 200
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- are put in the control group; requests with an index between 201 and 1000 are put in the treatment group.
- Standard IDs, IP Addresses, or FreeWheel IDs are used for identifying the ghost bidding User ID Type.
- For Standard Ghost Bidding User ID Type,
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- Buyer Cloud uses cookies.
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For the IP Address Ghost Bidding User ID Type,
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Buyer Cloud uses both IPv4 (IP version 4) and IPv6 (IP version 6)
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. However, if both types of
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IP addresses are present in a bid request, IPv6 will take priority over IPv4.
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Additionally, if a bid request contains obfuscated
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IP addresses (where the IP is hidden or masked), that request will not be eligible for line items using IP Address as
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the Ghost Bidding User ID Type. In other words, only bid requests with visible, non-obfuscated IP addresses can be used for Ghost Bidding based on IP address.
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- For FreeWheel ID Network Ghost Bidding User ID Types, Buyer Cloud uses the user ID as determined by the FreeWheel Identity Network. For more information on how the FreeWheel Identity Network identifies users, see Attribution Powered by FreeWheel Identity Network.
Ghost Bidding
- All requests go through targeting, creative matching, pacing, and frequency capping to see if a line item bids on it.
- If a line item bids and the user has been assigned a user index between 1 to 200, then the bid
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- will be dropped (not sent to the exchange) and logged as a
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- ghost bid.
Win Prediction
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Buyer Cloud predicts
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whether a
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ghost bid will win and become a
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ghost impression. To make these predictions, Buyer Cloud trains win rate models daily for each line item on the previous day's data. For the model to perform well, it needs sufficient data. The model requires at least 5,000 impressions from the previous day to be effectively trained.
The model training process runs daily, therefore, ghost bid logging will begin only after the model has been trained and deployed for the line item. Ghost bid logs are typically viewable the day after enabling the feature.
Treatment vs Control Group Conversion Attribution
When
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a conversion event is received, it runs attribution methodology across both
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the treatment and control groups' impressions to determine which group was responsible for driving
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the conversion.
Info
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Reporting & Logs
Incrementality Report
In Report Builder, the Incrementality Report calculates the incremental lift and other key metrics across both treatment and control groups, including impressions, conversion, conversion value, and conversion rate. See Incrementality Report to learn more.
Incremental Lift is calculated using the following equation: (Treatment group conversion rate – Control group conversion rate) / Control group conversion rate
Ghost Logs
Beeswax also offers Ghost Win Logs for users who would like to run their own attribution methods, and Ghost Attribution Logs for users to run their own incrementality analysis. Please speak to your Beeswax Account Representative to enable Ghost Logs. See Ghost Log Schema in GitHub.
Ghost Bidding Configuration
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This is not supported for in-app/postback/SKAd attribution methods because these attribution processes are run outside of
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Buyer Cloud.
Activate Ghost Bidding on a Line Item
| Info |
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Experiments and Ghost Bidding cannot be used in tandem on the same line items. |
Campaign
On the Campaign > Overview page, you can set the Default Ghost Bidding User ID Type. All line items created under the campaign will have Ghost Bidding enabled and will default to this Ghost Bidding User ID Type setting.
Line Item
On the Line Item > General page, you can enable Ghost Bidding by selecting the toggle to Yes. You can then select the Ghost Bidding User ID Type that will be used to bucket users for ghost bidding.
Ghost bidding is enabled at the line item level and can be configured during creation or when editing the line item. To enable ghost bidding on a line item:
- Navigate to a line item's General screen (either during or after creation of the line item).
- Scroll down to the Ghost Bidding section and expand it.
- Set the Enable Ghost Bidding toggle to "YES," then choose the appropriate Ghost Bidding User ID Type—either Standard, IP Address, FreeWheel ID Network Person, or FreeWheel ID Network Household—which will be used to categorize users. See below for more details on each ID type.
- Click Save.
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Ghost Bidding ID Types
Ghost bidding can be configured to use one of the two different ID types:
ID Type |
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Description | Supported Conversion Types for Incrementality Report | |
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Standard |
| Non-Postback |
IP Address |
| Non-Postback |
FAQs
Q: Does the user index for a particular user stay the same across all Ghost Bidding line items?
A: Yes, Beeswax does not change the hash to index a user, so the same User ID gets the same assigned user index.
Q: Can a customer define the split between treatment and control groups?
A: Currently, all groups are split at an 80:20 (treatment and control) ratio.
Q: Is the Incrementality Report supported across all attribution types?
A: To generate a Incrementality Report, Beeswax needs to see all conversion events to run attribution against Ghost Impressions, therefore, the Incrementality Report does not support any campaigns or line items that are using post-back attribution (mobile in-app and custom attribution methods). For users who want to run their own attribution methods or incrementality calculations, Beeswax offers Ghost Logs.
Q: Can I use different Ghost Bidding User ID Types for different line items in the same campaign?
A: Yes, but it is not recommended unless you are sure that the different line items have disjoint targeting.
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FreeWheel ID Network Person |
| Non-Postback |
FreeWheel ID Network Household |
| Non-Postback |
When ghost bidding is enabled on a line item, it implicitly targets bid requests with a specific user ID type. This means Buyer Cloud will bid on requests that include the selected user ID type and filter out those that do not. For example, if the user ID type is an IP address, Buyer Cloud will filter out bid requests where no IP address is present or where an anonymous IP address is used
Reporting & Logs
Incrementality Report
In reporting, the Incrementality Report calculates the incremental lift and other key metrics across both treatment and control groups, including impressions, conversion, conversion value, and conversion rate. Incremental Lift is calculated using the following equation: (Treatment group conversion rate – Control group conversion rate) / Control group conversion rate.
Ghost Logs
Ghost win logs are offered for users who would like to run their own attribution methods, and ghost attribution logs for users to run their own incrementality analysis.
| Note |
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To enable ghost logs, please speak to your Account Representative. |
| Info |
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| For privacy purposes, FreeWheel Person or Household IDs are not included in logs. |
Training Resources
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