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Give up price

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Important

This guide only applies to the legacy line item. If you are using the augmented line item (ALI), see Optimization Guide.

Overview

The Give Up Price is a bid price threshold which determines the order in which bids are considered in an auction.

There are two types of bids (Optimized Bids and Learn Bids) that are designated by networks, and two types of auctions (Revenue Auctions and Learn Auctions) that are designated by publishers. Bids are assigned to auctions by system algorithms, which do not take into account the type of bid. For example, a Learn Bid can be assigned to an Optimized Auction, and an Optimized Bid can be assigned to a Learn Auction. This allows Learn Bids and Optimized Bids to compete for the same impressions.

  • Revenue Auctions give preference to Optimized bids in which there is high confidence in the accuracy of the bid compared to the current market (i.e., the bid has been refined so that it is likely to be a fair price for the market).
  • Learn Auctions give preference to Learn bids that are newer and do not yet have well-established parameters compared to the current market (i.e., the bid may be radically high or low for the market).

A publisher needs to allocate bids to both learn auctions and revenue auctions in order to maximize their total revenue for the following reasons:

  • Campaigns expire and a network will always want a supply of optimized campaigns to produce revenue.
  • New offers begin and networks want to find these new potential top performers.

Therefore, publishers will always allocate some bids (optimized or learn bids) to learn auctions and some to revenue auctions. However, this raises the problem of accepting bids that either make little to no money for the publisher, or accepting bids that provide no valid data that the networks can use to optimize future bids. For this reason, optimized bids in a revenue auction, or learn bids in a learn auction, will not receive preference if they are below the give up price amount.

Important

The concept of give up price has no bearing on how the bid is calculated or valued; it only affects the bid hierarchy.

Bid types

The following are Optimized bids:

  • Managed Base Bids - These bids generate a base CPM of revenue for the network every time they serve.
  • Optimized Managed Bids - These bids generate an amount of revenue that we can accurately predict per success event.
  • RTB CPM Bids - These bids pay the seller on a per impression basis.
  • RTB Cross Network CPA/CPC Bids - These bids generate an amount of revenue that we can accurately predict per success event.

The following are Learn bids:

  • Managed Learn Bids - These bids are from newer campaigns that have not had enough success events for us to accurately predict their revenue generation.
  • RTB CPA/CPC Learn Bids - These bids are from newer campaigns that have not had enough success events for us to accurately predict their revenue generation.

Revenue auction hierarchy

  1. Optimized and Base bids
  2. Learn bids
  3. All bids

Once bids are submitted to a Revenue Auction, the Optimized and Base bids are considered first. If all Optimized and Base bids are below the give up price, the system will then look at Learn bids and choose the highest one that exceeds the give up price. If all Learn bids are below the Give Up Price, the system then looks at all bids and chooses the highest one.

Learn auction hierarchy

  1. Learn bids
  2. Optimized and Base bids
  3. All bids

Once bids are submitted to a Learn Auction, the Learn bids are considered first. If all Learn bids are below the give up price, the system will then look at Optimized and Base bids and choose the highest one that exceeds the give up price. If all Optimized and Base bids are below the give up price, the system then considers all bids and chooses the highest one.

Give up price in auction hierarchies

The give up price is the average Revenue Per Thousand (RPM) from Learn bids. In each auction hierarchy, this amount acts as a threshold; bids that do not exceed the Give Up Price are moved to the bottom of the hierarchy (#3 in the Revenue Auction Hierarchy and Learn Auction Hierarchy above). If there is not enough data on a venue level, give up price on that venue is set to the seller level give up price. If there is not enough data on the seller level to calculate a give up price, the give up price defaults to $0.001.

Example - Learn Auctions:

There are five bids in each of these Learn Auction examples:

  1. $0.35 - Optimized
  2. $0.15 - Learn
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Case 1: Give up = $0.09

  1. $0.35 - Optimized
  2. $0.15 - Learn
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Learn Bids are considered first. The highest Learn Bid that exceeds the give up price is Bid 2 ($0.15).

Case 2: Give up = $0.22

  1. $0.35 - Optimized
  2. $0.15 - Learn
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Learn Bids are considered first, but all of the Learn Bids are below the give up price. The system then considers Optimized or Base Bids, and the highest Optimized or Base bid that exceeds the give up price is Bid 1 ($0.35).

Case 3: Give up = $0.60

  1. $0.35 - Optimized
  2. $0.15 - Learn
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Learn Bids are considered first, but all of the Learn Bids are below the give up price. Optimized and Base Bids are considered next, but all Optimized and Base Bids are below the Give Up Price. The system then considers all bids, and the highest bid that exceeds the give up price is Bid 1 ($0.35).

Example - Revenue Auctions:

There are five bids in each of these Revenue Auctions:

  1. $0.45 - Learn
  2. $0.35 - Optimized
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Case 1: Give up = $0.09

  1. $0.45 - Learn
  2. $0.35 - Optimized
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Optimized or Base Bids are considered first. The highest Optimized or Base Bid that exceeds the give up price is Bid 2 ($0.35).

Case 2: Give up = $0.30

  1. $0.45 - Learn
  2. $0.35 - Optimized
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Optimized or Base Bids are considered first. The highest Optimized or Base Bid that is above the give up price is selected; therefore, Bid 2 ($0.35) is the winner.

Case 3: Give up = $0.60

  1. $0.45 - Learn
  2. $0.35 - Optimized
  3. $0.12 - Base
  4. $0.10 - Optimized
  5. $0.08 - Learn

Optimized or Base Bids are considered first. All of the Optimized and Base Bids are below the give up price. Learn Bids are considered next, but all Learn Bids are below the give up price. The system then considers all bids, and the highest bid that exceeds the give up price is Bid 1 ($0.45).