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Integrating with OpenX Ad Exchange

Last updated August 10, 2020

If you are a new OpenX Demand Partner, use this page to plan, optimize, and launch your integration.

Integrating with OpenX Ad Exchange involves the following steps:

Meet technical requirements for bidding.
Meet ad quality requirements.
Enhance your integration with features, optimizations, and buying options, based on your needs:
Test and launch your integration.

Technical Requirements for Bidding

The primary prerequisite is to develop a bidding implementation based on OpenRTB, the protocol that OpenX uses to manage auctions with Demand Partners. If you have an existing implementation that is compatible with the IAB’s OpenRTB 2.5 specification, then you must make some minor customizations.

Make sure you meet the following OpenX technical requirements for receiving bid requests and sending bid responses.

Requirement	Purpose
Pass winning price macro and decrypt winning price	The winning price macro enables OpenX can track impressions and spend. OpenX substitutes the macro with the winning price of a given auction. OpenX passes back the winning price as unpadded, web-safe encoding. You must decrypt the price to be able to view it.
Pass Buyer ID	The buyer ID is important for ad quality monitoring and Programmatic Direct use.
Pass Creative ID (CRID)	You must pass a CRID for every unique creative for consistent auditing.
Pass click macro	You must implement at least one click macro, so that OpenX can track clicks for your ads and understand publisher and marketplace performance.
Synchronize user data	For OpenX to pass your user ID in bid requests, you must begin matching your cookied user IDs to those of OpenX Ad Exchange.
Pass `adomain` value or `bundle` ID	OpenX uses these values to determine the brand for each bid response.

Ad Quality Requirements

Make sure your ad content complies with OpenX quality standards and that your integration enables enforcement of those standards.

Requirement	Purpose
Respect blocked categories	Recognizing blocked categories in a bid request ensures that you do not attempt to submit ads that a publisher does not accept.
Ensure ads are non-rotating	Rotating ads can cause technical problems on publisher pages as well as performance tracking issues.
Identify AQ Scanner impressions	By distinguishing AQ scanner impressions, you avoid counting them as valid impressions, which could cause impression and spend discrepancies.
Comply with OpenX Exchange Demand Policies	By understanding, and complying with, ad policies, you ensure that you are submitting acceptable ad content.

Inventory Formats and Screens

Target any screen or format according to your needs and objectives. Contact your Platform Development Manager (PDM) for guidance or to enable any of these features:

Inventory Format	Description
Mobile app	If you want to target mobile app inventory, know the OpenRTB fields that identify it.
Video	If you want to target video inventory, know the OpenRTB fields that identify it.
Opt-in video	Opt-in video motivates users to watch full-screen, non-skippable video ads within a mobile app by giving them a reward in exchange for their attention and time. The option to include an end card display ad provides a clear call to action for the user.

Bidding Optimizations

Consider using the following methods to improve your bidding efficiency. Contact your PDM for guidance or to enable any of these features:

Organization	Description
Multi-size bid requests	By consolidating multiple ad sizes for a single impression opportunity into a single bid request, you can improve QPS efficiency.
Loss notifications	Real-time notifications tell you why you lost an auction. This can be helpful in ensuring better results in future auctions.
Compressed bid requests/responses	By compressing bid requests and responses, you can reduce network bandwidth usage.

Programmatic Direct

Programmatic Direct deals enable you to contract directly with leading publishers for access to high-quality inventory. To enable this feature, contact your PDM.

Launching your Integration

Take the following steps to prepare, test, and launch your integration.

Milestone	Description
Set up RTB endpoint	Before creating traffic sets, you must set up at least one RTB endpoint, which is a location in your network that connects to the OpenX Ad Exchange and receive bid requests.
Create traffic sets	Use Traffic Shaper to control the content and flow of your bid request traffic, allowing you to maximize your spend on the most desirable inventory for your campaigns.
Bid on limited volume	Work with the Platform Demand Team to verify that your integration works properly with a limited amount of traffic.
Scale volume	Work with the Platform Demand Manager and technical contacts, to scale your volume and monitor performance aspects such as timeouts, error rates and impression/spend discrepancies.

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