Troubleshoot a Deal
The openx-deal-troubleshooter skill diagnoses deal performance end to end. Give the AI assistant a deal ID or deal name, and it walks the deal funnel, explains where and why delivery drops, and recommends actions in plain business language. The skill uses read-only tools, so it never changes the deal. Along with the funnel stages below, it analyzes signals such as Health Score, spend, bid CPM, CPM, viewability, CTR and VTR.
The Deal Funnel
| Stage | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Eligible bid requests | Total inventory supply available from publishers. |
| Targeted bid requests | Supply that passed the deal’s targeting. |
| Bid responses | Bids the DSP returned to OpenX. |
| Fills | Bids that won the internal auction. |
| Impressions | Ads rendered after winning the publisher auction, which generate spend. |
When to Use It
- A deal is underdelivering, and you want to know why.
- How to scale a deal.
- You need a ready to share report generated.
- You want to understand how recent changes are affecting performance.
- You want to know where the funnel leaks, or why bids are losing, overall or by publisher, DSP, domain or bundle.
- You want to know what changed on a deal, or how a deal is pacing.
- You want to know which targeting setting limits a deal, or you want a general health check.
If you are not sure what to ask or if TA supports it, you can always ask TA to provide the list of topics it covers, suggest possible questions.
How It Works
- Find the deal. The assistant resolves the deal ID to the deal. If one code matches several deals (for example, a parent deal and its child deals), it lists them and asks which ones to analyze.
- Check for OpenXDirect™. If a line item buys on the deal, the deal is an OpenXDirect deal, and the assistant switches to the Diagnose a Line Item skill.
- Run the analyses your question needs. It picks from the analyses in the table below.
- It analyzes the data it pulled to answer your question. Depending on the question, that can mean comparing metrics with benchmarks, finding where the funnel weakens or checking whether a configuration change came before a shift in performance.
- It leads with the conclusion and two to five recommendations ordered by expected impact, supports each one with numbers, and states the deal, time frame and filters it used. Then it offers the next logical analysis.
| Your question | Analysis | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| How is the deal doing overall? | Health check for the last 7 days. | getDealAnalytics |
| Where is the funnel leaking? | Funnel against benchmarks, by channel, format and device. | getDealFunnelConversions |
| Why are bids losing? | Bid-loss reasons (pricing, creative, ad quality), optionally by publisher, DSP, domain or bundle. | lossReasonAnalysis |
| Did something spike or drop? | Hourly metrics for the last 48 hours. | getDealNrtMetrics |
| How has it trended? | Daily metrics over a date range. | getDealMetricsByDay |
| Where does the traffic come from? | Breakdown by one dimension. | getDealMetricsByDimension |
| What targeting is applied? | Targeting inspection. | getDealTargetingConfiguration |
| What changed? | Audit trail of deal and package changes. | getDealAudittrailChanges |
Good to Know
- Daily data excludes today. Yesterday’s data is complete at about 12:00 to 13:00 UTC.
- Format, channel, device, country, audiences and similar settings are usually fixed when a deal is set up. When these settings limit volume, the assistant says so rather than recommending that you broaden the targeting.
- Excluding MFA inventory or below-average quality domains is a deliberate quality safeguard. The assistant does not recommend removing it to gain volume.
- If your OpenX MCP connection does not include the deal analytics tools, the assistant says so and stops.
Safeguards
- Read-only: the skill never changes the deal or its package.
- Every number comes from tool output: the assistant does not invent metrics, percentages or trends.
Example Prompts
“Why is deal OX-XXXX-XXXX underdelivering?”
“Which DSPs are losing the most bids on deal OX-XXXX-XXXX this week?”
“Did anything change on deal OX-XXXX-XXXX before delivery dropped yesterday?”
Related Skills
- Diagnose a Line Item: for OpenXDirect deals, which are bought through line items.
- Create a Deal: to set up a new deal.