When it comes to measuring the performance of your header bidding strategy, we got you covered. Tracking header bidding performance in the categories below will give you a clear idea of the value of your inventory and will help you make better decisions in working with partners.
Revenue Related
These items are related directly to revenue. Track these to see how revenue is being produced.
Revenue This is a bit of a given because at the end of the day, it’s all about the bottom line. This metric tells you how much money you’re making at a holistic level across all partners. However, it’s equally important to keep track of your partners on an individual level, too.
Bids Won Bids won shows you the total number of requests won. It also tells you which bids won, which partners are consistently winning. Tracking the partners that are winning can help you identify heavy-hitting vendors and those who aren’t as engaged as you’d like them to be.
In correlation with your key-values, this metric will tell you what your most valuable segments are. If your bids won is low, you need to look into bringing on additional partners to ensure you have a good variety of bid requests.
Net vs Gross Bid CPM All bids are not equal. Discrepancies in bidding styles among partners can result in publishers missing out on money. If an advertising partner bids on gross terms (not accounting for any commissions or other fees), the publisher earns less money. And, another partner may have bid more.
Performance Related
Revenue is the top end goal, but if you don’t track the things that contribute to revenue then you’re missing the boat.
Bid Requests This is the number of requests made to each vendor every time an ad is displayed. It also shows you what percentage of ads each vendor is taking. This metric is important, but it can really provide great insight when paired with tracking the number of bids won and the number of buyers you have in your network.
Participation Rate Piggy-backing off of bids one, Participation rate is the percentage that any one demand partner bids on inventory. As a publisher, you want this number to be high. If you’re getting low participation rates for particular partners, you may want to see if you can find other partners who are more engaged with your inventory.
Won eCPMs by Ad Unit and by Line Item Effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPMs) is calculated by dividing your total number of earnings by the total number of impressions (Revenue / Impressions) x 1,000 = Your eCPM. Won eCPMs represents a completed bid when a vendor pays for a specific impression — essentially showing how much you made from a specific impression by the thousands. As stated in previous paragraphs, looking at these two areas on an individual and holistic level will help you identify your most valuable segments.
3Rd Party Tracking
Demand Partner Variance
This specific metric keeps track of the differences between what the demand partner says they bid and what your own system says. If the variance is too high, there’s an issue and it needs to be addressed with your partner. With PubWise, our reporting looks at what vendors bid and what you, the publisher, actually receives in revenue. You can even input the numbers in your revenue share agreement so that all of your bids are equalized.
Latency Reporting
Latency reporting for header bidding is critical. On one hand you need to identify if demand partners are bidding late. On the other hand you need to identify if there is money left on the table just outside the current latency settings. You also need to know if decreasing your latency would not have significant detriment to revenue while improving the user experience.
Header Bidding Reporting, Then and Now
Previously, header bidding reporting was a lengthy, manual process that required publishers to pull internal data, solicit reports from partners, and synthesize them in Excel spreadsheets.
PubWise lets you track all of this reporting on a global level and down to the ad unit level for the clearest possible picture of how your inventory and partners are performing. Analyzing how your header bidder portfolio is doing is as simple as clicking a button.
