RTB Price Lists

An RTB price list is the central selling rule. One price list decides, at the same time, which demand partners may buy, which faces they may buy, what the floor price is and how the answers that come back are compared.

This page is for an organization’s owner, admin and manager employees, who create and edit price lists. A viewer can open a price list and read it.

Three screens of the client cabinet edit price lists, each of a different kind. Check the path in the address bar before you start editing.

/prices: Edits RTB price lists. Everything on this page is about that one.
/policies: Edits automated guaranteed price lists, which price and gate automated guaranteed campaigns. The client cabinet labels them simply Guaranteed. See Automated guaranteed prices.
/rtb-prices: Edits the price lists used by programmatic guaranteed campaigns. See Programmatic guaranteed campaigns.

What one price list decides

A single price list carries four decisions that are usually separate products elsewhere.

Which demand partners may buy: The price list lists them, in priority groups. A group can instead be written as an exclusion list, in which case every demand partner the organization has enabled takes part except the ones named.
Which faces they may buy: A price list is applied to a set of faces.
What the floor price is: A floor price, or a table of floor prices by creative length, or a price derived from the audience estimate on the request. Floor prices covers all three.
How the answers are compared: The price list’s mode, below.

Auction mode and waterfall mode

Every RTB price list runs in one of two modes, chosen when it is created and changeable afterwards.

Auction mode offers the opportunity to every demand partner in the price list at once and compares the bids that come back. This is the ordinary mode, and the one behind everything the RTB Auction section describes.

Waterfall mode asks the same partners and takes the first usable answer instead of comparing prices.

In waterfall mode the partners are asked together and whoever answers first wins, so the order they are listed in is not a ranking. Waterfall mode sets out what happens.

A demand partner can only be put in a price list if its integration type takes part in bidding at all. Naming one that does not is rejected when the price list is saved.

Priority groups

Inside a price list in auction mode, demand partners are arranged into numbered priority groups. A group is the unit the platform works with: partners inside one group are asked together.

Two shapes of group exist.

A list: The group names the demand partners it contains, in order. Each entry can carry a deal type, and — in waterfall mode — a fixed price for that partner instead of a computed floor.
An exclusion list: The group is marked as a blacklist and names the partners to leave out. Every other demand partner the organization has enabled, whose type takes part in bidding, is included.

Two rules are enforced when the price list is saved. The same demand partner cannot appear twice in one group, and a group that is not an exclusion list cannot be empty.

The groups are asked at the same time — see How the winner is chosen.

Coverage and the default price list

Applying a price list to a face is done in the price list’s targeting, alongside its properties.

A face can be covered by at most one RTB price list. Applying a second price list to a face that already has one moves it. A face taken off a price list is attached to the organization’s default price list instead.

Every organization has exactly one default price list.

The price list an organization creates first becomes the default automatically.
Marking another price list as the default clears the flag from the previous one.
A price list cannot simply be un-defaulted. The way to stop a price list being the default is to make a different one the default.
The default price list cannot be deleted. Attempting it is refused.

The default price list is what covers every face no price list names. It is therefore the price list that decides what happens to a newly synchronized face nobody has got round to targeting yet, which is worth knowing before setting its floor price.

Ad requests for a face that has neither a price list of its own nor a default price list fail.

Creating a price list

The page at /prices lists an organization’s price lists down one side and opens the selected one beside them. A price list’s properties — its name, description, mode, whether it is the default, its demand partners and its floor prices — and its targeting — the faces it applies to — are edited separately and saved separately.

Creating a price list and putting it to work

Open /prices and create a price list. Give it a name, and choose auction mode unless you specifically want first-usable-answer behavior.
Add the demand partners as one or more priority groups, and set the floor price. The floor is rejected if it falls below the platform’s minimum.
Save the properties.
Open targeting, select the faces this price list should cover, and save. Any face you select stops being covered by whatever price list covered it before.
Confirm the outcome: an ad request for one of those faces now goes to the partners you listed, at the floor you set. Reporting shows the requests as they arrive.