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Overview

Bid Decision Flow is a diagnostic tool designed to help troubleshoot line item performance. It visualizes auction data and shows how the bidding system responded to auctions within a specified lookback window, helping users identify why a line item may not be bidding.

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How It Works

To access Bid Decision Flow:

1. Navigate to the Edit Line Item screen.
   
   
2. Click on the Analytics tab on the far right.

By default, the tool displays data from the past hour, showing Pass/Fail metrics and a visualization of the drop-off at each step of the bidding process.

Below is a breakdown of each stage of bid evaluation, with detailed descriptions of potential issues at each stage:

Bid Evaluation Stages

• Targeting: Identifies if the targeting key caused a non-match for the auction.
  • Solution: Expand targeting by adjusting segments, geo values, or inventory lists.
    
    
• Creative Match: Captures whether the creative properties led to a non-match.
  • Solution: Review creative setup, including attributes like MIME types, video bit rate, and size, and ensure they align with the targeted inventory.
    
    
• Frequency Cap: Checks if the line item exceeded the frequency cap.
  • Solution: Loosen frequency cap restrictions or add additional frequency cap ID types.
    
    
• Pacing: Verifies if the pacing algorithm held back bidding.
  • Solution: If pacing is active, check if the line item is pacing too aggressively or not enough.
    
    
• Bidding Agent: Indicates if the bidding agent chose not to bid based on strategy.
  • Solution: Adjust target values in optimized bidding strategies (e.g., CPC Goal, Video Completion Rate) or switch to a different strategy.
    
    
• Budget: Determines if the line item had sufficient budget.
  • Solution: Adjust daily or lifetime budget, and verify if the budget cap has been reached.
    
    
• Post-Processing: Identifies if the bid was dropped due to final processing issues (e.g., bid price lower than the floor price).
  • Solution: Raise the CPM bid or ensure the bid exceeds the deal floor for targeted deals.

Drop-Reasons

Drop-reasons are available for certain stages and provide more granular insights into why a bid was dropped. To view these reasons, click the ‘Show Details’ button for Targeting Match and Post-Processing stages.

Targeting Match Drop Reasons

Drop-reasons for targeting mismatches are displayed at the module level. A mismatch in any of the targeting modules (e.g., Geo, Platform) can cause a line item not to bid. Bid Decision Flow logs the first mismatch it encounters.

Post-Processing Drop Reasons

Post-processing issues that cause a bid to be dropped are listed below:

These stages will result in either a “Did Not Bid” or “Bid Successful” count, allowing users to identify where drop-offs occur and take corrective actions to improve delivery.

Lookback Range

To adjust the lookback range, select the desired range from the dropdown in the upper left. Available options include:

• 30 Minutes
• 1 Hour
• 3 Hours
• 6 Hours
• 24 Hours
• 48 Hours
• 72 Hours

Unlike Real-Time Bidding Stats, Bid Decision Flow is not updated in real-time; the data is refreshed every 15 minutes. Be mindful of this delay when making changes to the line item and reviewing the analytics.

Tips for Interpretation

• Targeting Drop-Off: If drop-off appears large at the Targeting stage, it may skew the perception of issues in later stages. To better understand the data, users can collapse or hide columns in the graph to isolate specific stages and evaluate performance more accurately.