SSP Campaigns: Buying, Selling & Exchange

Applies to: Publishers · needs the matching permission on your account

What this is#

SSP campaigns connect your account to other ad platforms over real-time bidding (RTB). Each SSP campaign is one connection, a "feed", with its own settings, its own endpoint and its own statistics. You find them under RTB → Campaigns (or the RTB submenu in the publisher menu), with three types:

Which types you see depends on your network and on what your account manager switched on for you.

The protocol itself (request and response format per ad type, with examples) is in the RTB integration reference, linked from RTB Docs on the campaigns page.

When you'll use this#

• A traffic partner wants to send you its traffic over OpenRTB, JSON or XML: create a Buying feed and give them its endpoint.
• You run an ad manager and want an SSP network to bid on your ad zones: create a Selling campaign.
• You want to resell a partner's requests to your own buyers and keep a margin: create an Exchange campaign.

Step by step#

Create a Buying feed#

1. Open RTB → Campaigns, pick the Buying tab and click Create new campaign. The type can't be changed later.
2. In Basic campaign settings enter a Name, the Ad Type and the Display options of the traffic. Use one feed per ad format the partner sends.
3. Choose the Protocol the partner uses: OpenRTB, JSON, XML or JSON Bidder.
4. For OpenRTB, choose the ADM Response Type: the creative format you put in the bid's adm (for example HTML, iFrame or XML), whatever the partner can display.
5. Pick the Website the feed's traffic is booked under, and the Bid Auction: 1st-price auction or 2nd Price Auction.
6. Optional settings:
   • Connected Ron Campaigns — limit which of your RON campaigns may answer this feed. Leave empty to let every eligible campaign compete.
   • Bill on the exchange billing notice (burl) — switch on when the partner bills on its billing notice. The impression is then counted when that notice arrives, at the price the partner reports.
   • Use Optimiser — automatically blocks or lowers bids for sources inside the feed that underperform, based on discrepancy rules you set.
7. Narrow the traffic you accept with Geo-targeting and the traffic filters (device, operating system, browser, carrier). Requests outside them are skipped.
8. Save. The form now shows the RTB Endpoint: the URL with the feed's token. Copy it to the partner, together with the matching page of the RTB reference.

The same screen offers a Stats API URL, which shows this feed's own figures and nothing else, so you can hand it to the partner. Where available, you can also pull a partner's own reporting into your stats (for example AdNova or Mondiad credentials).

Create a Selling campaign (ad managers)#

1. Pick the Selling tab and click Create new campaign.
2. Choose the Use Type: Use RTB URL (one partner URL for all traffic), Connect Per Adzone (one partner URL per ad zone) or Use for Smart Zones.
3. Enter the partner's URL and set Set Your Bid Percentage here (% from original bid): the share of the partner's bid you pass on. The rest is your margin.
4. Optional: switch on Log skipped requests to record in the stats why requests were not sent to this partner (the Skip Timeouts and Skip No Bids columns). Useful while setting up.
5. Optional: switch on Scan landing pages of winning bids to let the Ad Scanner check where the partner's winning bids send your visitors. See Scanning RTB Landing Pages.

Create an Exchange campaign (ad managers)#

Pick the Exchange tab, set up the incoming side like a Buying feed, then choose which of your buyers may bid and the bid percentage you pass back to the partner.

Header bidding#

New HB Campaign creates a header-bidding feed instead: a client-side auction with a JavaScript snippet for your pages, or a Prebid-compatible endpoint. It appears when header bidding is enabled for your account.

Manage feeds and read the stats#

• On RTB → Campaigns, filter by Ad type and State, search, and use Edit, Clone, Delete or the status toggle. Select several to activate, pause or delete them together.
• RTB → Stats shows each feed's performance, with tabs for Buying, Selling and Exchange, a chart, and breakdowns By Campaign, By Country, By Website, By Ad Zone, By Network and By Keyword, as a Flat View or Tree View.
• RTB → Dashboard is a focused dashboard with SSP panels.

Options reference#

SSP stats#

Example#

Tom runs an ad manager for his gaming sites and buys traffic from a pop network that offers an OpenRTB feed. He creates a Buying feed with Ad Type Pop, Protocol OpenRTB and his main site as Website. He sends the RTB Endpoint and the pop page of the RTB reference to the network. The next morning RTB → Stats shows requests but few bids; the By Country breakdown shows most requests come from countries his campaigns don't target. He narrows Geo-targeting to his markets and the bid rate rises.

Tips#

• One feed per partner and ad format keeps the stats readable and the settings simple.
• A paused feed answers every request with an empty "no content" response, so pause a feed rather than deleting it while you investigate.
• Remind partners that visitor fields (IP address, user agent, language, country) must describe the visitor, not their server. Otherwise geo targeting and bot filtering go wrong.
• On a Selling campaign, switch Log skipped requests off once it runs well; it's for diagnosis.

Troubleshooting#

Related#

• RTB Statistics & Reports — the buying side with your own bidder
• How to buy traffic with your own bidder (RTB)
• Smart Zones
• Ad Scanner
• Connected Ad Networks