SmartSwitch Overview

SmartSwitch optimises a Buyer’s BidStream by analyzing bid request parameters such as Country, Device, Native, and others. Using these parameters and overlaying the data on impressions that were won/bid on, SmartSwitch is able to detect a Buyer’s specific buying pattern and optimise the type of bidstream traffic it receives. For more information on the parameters used, see the SmartSwitch Fields section.

SmartSwitch also uses u-Predict models to estimate the probability of a bid request sent to a Buyer receiving a winning bid. To learn more, see the u-Predict site.

By combining the traffic that matches both criteria: desired traffic with higher win probability, a Buyer receives a much higher quality of traffic as defined by their own buying preferences.

SmartSwitch and QPS

Listening to the the full BidSwitch bidstream would overwhelm most Buyers and result in overloading a Buyer’s servers. As well as incurring increased costs just to be able to listen to more traffic, without SmartSwitch Buyers would also listen to a lot more random traffic thus reducing the quality.

The goal of SmartSwitch is to ensure that the best bids reach a Buyer within its QPS settings. For more information about QPS, see the QPS Overview and Controls section. Use the following table and charts to understand the benefits of SmartSwitch.

SmartSwitch Buyer Benefits

SmartSwitch Features and Benefits

SmartSwitch Disabled

SmartSwitch Enabled

Random inventory is sent to the Buyer based on a subset of the total bidstream.

Optimised inventory is sent to the Buyer, which closely aligns with their buying pattern.

Lower relative levels of desired inventory available to the Buyer versus the amount of traffic to which it listens.

Increased levels of desired inventory sent to the Buyer within their listening capacity.

Lower bid/win ratio due to inventory not matching the Buyer’s bidding parameters as closely as possible.

Higher bid/win ratio because traffic matches the Buyer’s bidding strategy.

Lower Buyer ROI on servers and other infrastructure costs.

Better ROI due to increased efficiency of infrastructure usage.

Machine learning quickly responds to any changes in a Buyer’s buying pattern, and realigns bids sent to match the Buyers wishes.

Any new inventory will be immediately routed to a Buyer if considered optimal.

SmartSwitch BidStream Optimisation

Smart Switching

SmartSwitch Supplier Benefits

  • Routes traffic to Buyers most interested in the inventory type you’re selling.

  • Increases the amount of interested Buyers potentially bidding on each impression, and with an increased number of bidders, theoretically a higher clearing price.

  • Screens all Bid Requests and returns a No Bid Reason should some traffic be flagged as potentially fraudulent, enabling Suppliers to clean up their network of possible bad actors, see the Supplier No Bid Reason section for more details.

QPS Overview and Controls

QPS (Queries Per second) in BidSwitch refers to the maximum absolute limit placed on traffic received from a Supplier or sent to a Buyer per data centre. Your total QPS volume is split between two traffic types.

  • Deals : for private deal traffic or other traffic sources that require special consideration to ensure they reach your trading partner.

  • Open Auction : normal RTB open auction traffic.

Each of these has its own QPS value which partitions your total volume, and each value can be adjusted to the Buyer’s requirements within the constraints of the overall QPS capacity.

  • To view or request an adjustment to your QPS settings, on the myBidSwitch UI go to the Settings ‣ Data Center Controls page.

  • To request a new limit for either type of QPS, select Request New Limit for the relevant Data Centre.

Note

  • The QPS settings do not set the actual amount of traffic that BidSwitch sends to a Buyer. It is the maximum traffic that a Buyer could receive, and BidSwitch will not send more than the maximum QPS value.

  • It is highly recommended that you set the maximum QPS value in accordance with the real capacity of your servers. Otherwise, if you start buying in large volumes, BidSwitch will start sending the maximum amount of QPS which could overload your servers.

Traffic Composition

For open auction traffic, Buyers receive two types of traffic from BidSwitch: targeted and learning traffic.

The learning traffic is sent to detect changes in buying preferences. If a Buyer starts buying more from a specific traffic segment, then BidSwitch sends more traffic from that segment. This also works vice-versa, if a Buyer stops buying from a particular traffic segment, BidSwitch sends less traffic of that type.

Influencing Traffic Volumes

The real influence on traffic volumes sent to a Buyer is the amount and type of traffic that the Buyer buys. The more traffic that a Buyer buys in a particular segment, the more of that traffic will be sent to focus bidding on what is desired.

QPS Optimisation

On each Settings ‣ Data Center Controls ‣ <geo> panel you will see a QPS LIMIT TOOL. Using this slider, you can get a sense of how your spend might change in each region based on different volumes. The calculations and projections are based on the criteria outlined in the SmartSwitch Bid Request Weight section.

Note

Projections are extrapolated based on past data, and past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

SmartSwitch for Private Deals

SmartSwitch for Private Deals allows Buyers to filter their Deals Traffic using SmartSwitch. This feature works the same as when it filters Open Auction traffic.

  • Overall Private Deals QPS levels are set per Data Centre and can be found on the Settings ‣ Data Center Controls page

  • Private deals are those with pmp.private_auction bid request field set to 1, see the Private Marketplace Object section for more details.

  • Open Auction and Private Deals QPS volumes can be controlled within a Targeting Group settings.

  • SmartSwitch for Private Deals can be turned OFF/ON within the same section.

SmartSwitch shapes the Private Deals traffic being sent to your bidder to align with your active buying preferences and it will fill the available QPS with the most actively bought inventory. Buyers are free to turn-off SmartSwitch For Deals within Targeting Groups, in such cases no filtering is applied to the traffic and any limitations are due to random cutoff when QPS limits are reached.

  • To configure Targeting Groups to use Private Deals QPS and SmartSwitch for Deals, open the Targeting Groups ‣ [targeting group] ‣ Trading Settings – Edit section for the specific targeting group you wish to edit.

Important

If SmartSwitch for Private Deals is not enabled on your account, the UI will just present a greyed-out button. Please speak with your account manager to have it enabled on your account.

SmartSwitch Fields

The following request fields or characteristics are used by SmartSwitch models to weigh the probability of a Bid Request being valuable to the Buyer.

  • The browser name and version identified using the Device User Agent

  • The content type, whether the request is for Video, Display, Native or CTV

  • The country and region of origin identified using the device.geo object

  • The Device Type, Model, Langauge, OS, and OS Version Identified from the device object

  • The site domain or app bundle, taken from the respective site or app object fields

  • Whether it’s a private deal or open auction, take from pmp.private_auction

  • If the request matches a user group, see the SmartSwitch User Optimization section

  • Whether the Buyer has previously bid on the user and how much

  • The publisher ID, taken from the {app|site}.publisher.id field

  • The site ID, taken from the site.id field

  • Whether the request is secure, identified from the imp.secure field

  • The size(s) available

  • The slot ID taken from the imp.id field in the case of multiple slots

  • If it’s for display, whether it is for topframe, identified from banner.topframe

  • The ad position, taken from {banner|video}.pos

  • The imp.tagid