Q4 2023
User interface
“Ad Not Rendered” Renamed in RTB Breakout
This week, GMA SDK Buyers will see the “Ad Not Rendered” reason in the Unrendered Ads table of the RTB Breakout tool renamed to “Loaded But Not Rendered”. There will be no changes to the actual definition of this metric as “Loaded But Not Rendered” will continue to reflect the number of ads that won the auction but did not render outside of “Fatal VAST Errors”.
For more detailed information on RTB Breakout data, please refer to our Authorized Buyers Help Center.
Other product or Help Center updates
Interactive Media Ads (IMA SDK) Signal Support in Displaymanager and Displaymanagerver
Soon, we will broaden our support for displaymanager and displaymanagerver in the Google and OpenRTB protos to include Interactive Media Ads (IMA SDK) signals.
Bidders should expect to see new values of “InteractiveMediaAds-Android” or “InteractiveMediaAds-iOS” populated via adslot.display_manager in the Google protocol and imp.displaymanager in the OpenRTB protocol. Adslot.display_manager_version and imp.displaymanagerver will also be set to the respective IMA SDK version.
There were no release notes for November 20, 2023.
There were no release notes for November 6, 2023.
Troubleshoot
RTB Breakout “Outcome unknown”
A new “Outcome unknown” reason has been added to RTB Breakout. This reason indicates that we didn’t receive a client-side report back from the Protected Audience auction.[ enter release note here ]
Other product or Help Center updates
Notifications and Alerts for Authorized Buyers
Provide feedback on helpful notifications and alerts you would like to receive from Authorized Buyers to help you understand account activity. Please complete this short survey to provide feedback.
There were no release notes for October 9, 2023.
Q3 2023
There were no release notes for September 25, 2023.
Other product or Help Center updates
Billable Event Rate (BER) Fields
We now share Billable Event Rate (BER) with all bidders on mApp traffic. The BER multiplier reflects the likelihood that your bid would generate a billable event (that is, the ad renders successfully) if it won the auction, relative to the probability that the other bids in the auction generate a billable event if they won the auction. This adjustment can be larger or smaller than 1.
In late September, this adjustment will impact the final ranking in the auction (it will not affect the payment). BER values that could apply to your bid will be shared in bid requests via a repeated field adslot.billable_event_rate_bid_adjustment in the Google Real-time Bidding Proto and imp.ext.billable_event_rate_bid_adjustment in OpenRTB.
Moreover, the BER value applied to a bid will be shared via Real-time feedback in bid_response_feedback.billable_event_rate_bid_adjustment in the Google Real-time Bidding Proto and ext.bid_feedback.billable_event_rate_bid_adjustment in OpenRTB. See the developer documentation (Google protocol l OpenRTB protocol) for more details.
Other product or Help Center updates
Support for Publisher provided signals (PPS)
Publisher provided signals (PPS) is a privacy-safe way for publishers to share first-party audience and contextual taxonomic data with buyers directly in the bidstream without relying on third-party cookies or other identifiers.
PPS is based on the IAB Seller Defined Audiences framework. In the Real-Time Bidding Protocol (RTB), we will pass PPS data under the new SegmentData fields. Please refer to the IAB Seller Defined Audiences specs for Open RTB information.
To get started with PPS, please contact your Google Account Manager.
Multiplex formats discontinued
We have discontinued support for multiplex formats as of July 10, 2023. If you are looking to serve in a native ad format, we recommend targeting native ads. Buyers should know that publishers who used multiplex formats could automatically fallback to a regular native format. This will allow them to continue serving native ads with minimal interruption.
There were no release notes for August 7, 2023.
We have launched a new funnel stage in the RTB Breakout tool, "Rendered Ads". Users can now easily identify counts after reached queries and before impressions, in addition to quickly viewing render rate calculations. Alongside these improvements, we have moved the "Ad Not Rendered" and "Fatal VAST Errors" reason codes to the "Unrendered Ads" table in the “Reached Queries” stage.
There were no release notes for July 10, 2023.
Q2 2023
Troubleshoot
OpenRTB Video AdSlot Size
We have made a change in the ad slot size provided in the OpenRTB video ad requests. Instead of providing the first width and height pair, we will now send the maximum eligible size.
There were no release notes for June 12, 2023.
There were no release notes for May 29, 2023.
Other product or Help Center updates
‘excluded_app_ids’ (Google RTB) and ‘bapp’ (OpenRTB) fields
Beginning May 1, 2023, we introduced the ‘excluded_app_ids’ field in Google RTB and started to support the ‘bapp’ field in OpenRTB. If you will use this field to inform your bidding, please reach out to have it populated in your bid requests.
Declare App ID in bid response
We encourage you to declare your advertised app ID in bid responses for multiple benefits, including more accurate filtering and access to additional app rendering behaviors.
Other product or Help Center updates
Declare Agency ID in bid response
A new field has been introduced in the Google Proto for declaring the ID of the agency you are bidding on behalf of. Bidders should begin declaring the ID they associate with an agency in the bid response.
- Google Protocol: fill the BidResponse.ad.ad_slot.seat.
- OpenRTB Protocol: fill the seat field on the seatbid. For partners that already fill this field, no immediate action is required.
There were no release notes for April 17, 2023.
There were no release notes for April 03, 2023.
Q1 2023
Other product or Help Center updates
Rewarded Signal now in OpenRTB
Google will support the OpenRTB 2.6 specification rwdd to indicate whether a user will receive a reward for viewing an ad. This launch fills the rwdd field identically to is_rewarded_inventory, the previous extension for the same purpose.
Troubleshoot
Secure Signals Troubleshooting Tool
The RTB Troubleshooting tool now has a filter to show bidders why a Secure Signal is not included in the bid request. More information here.
Other product or Help Center updates
BidRequest.geo.accuracy Field in Bid Requests
Starting March 6, Google will fill the BidRequest.geo.accuracy field for many requests where this field was sometimes not previously filled. Google has been testing this change for a small fraction of traffic, and we determined that this change causes a small change of spend from your account.
Support For App Promotion Type in Bid Responses
We now have support for app promotion type, allowing bidders to declare app promotion type (e.g., install v. engagement) when returning an ad for app promotion. This field will help us apply features specific to app promotion types.
Bidders can populate app_promotion_value via BidResponse.ad.app_promotion_type when implemented with the Authorized Buyers protocol or Bid.ext.app_promotion_type when implemented with the OpenRTB protocol. Please note we ignore app_promotion_type if advertiser_app_id (or bundle in oRTB) field is not specified.
Other product or Help Center updates
ad_block_key / tag_id available for improved inventory identification
ad_block_key (Google protocol) and tag_id (OpenRTB) are included in the bid request as a unique identifier of a publisher’s ad placements. Bidders integrating with this signal have seen improved performance; it is encouraged to integrate this signal in your bidding logic for improved inventory targeting.
Other product or Help Center updates
Support For iOS Custom Product Pages
We now support iOS custom product pages. This launch allows advertisers the ability to showcase various App Store product pages to different audiences as part of SKStoreProductViewController. To take advantage of the release, bidders will need to update their responses to pass the `product_page_id` value in the SKAdNetworkResponse object. In the Authorized Buyers protocol this value is passed in BidResponse.ad.skadn.product_page_id and in the OpenRTB protocol this value is passed in Bid.ext.skadn.productpageid.
Open Bidders now eligible for Bidder Controls
All Open Bidders have been added to publisher settings and are eligible for publishers to apply network policies and/or protections. By default these filters are off for Open Bidding demand. More information can be found here.
Other product or Help Center updates
SKAN v3.0 + v4.0 Support for iOS
We now support SKAdNetwork (SKAN) v3.0 and v4.0 for bidders using the Google Mobile Ads (GMA) SDK to render their creatives on iOS devices.
SKAN v3.0 (available in iOS 14.6+) introduces multiple postbacks for eligible impressions. Please note that an eligible impression constitutes that a user has both installed and launched the app. You can refer to Apple’s release notes for more information. To take advantage of the SKAN v3.0 release, mApp bidders simply need to respond back with this version of SKAN if the request supports it.
SKAN v4.0 (available in iOS 16.1+) introduces a comprehensive set of enhancements which we encourage bidders to independently read in Apple’s release notes and overview. Please note that SKAN v4.0 requires a new ‘source_identifier’ ID in the bid response as opposed to the ‘campaign’ ID used in earlier versions. As such, we have added the BidResponse.ad.skan.source_identifier field for those using the Authorized Buyers protocol and the Bid.ext.skadn.sourceidentifier field for those using the oRTB protocol. Bid responses with SKAN v4.0 that omit the ‘source_identifier’ ID will be filtered.
Finally, note that SKAN v4.0 for mobile web HTML5 banner requests has been available since Safari 16.1. We will update our SKAdNetwork attribution documentation to include guidelines on web attribution usage once finalized and will provide support for web Native formats at a later time.
Considering SKAN is backwards compatible, we encourage our bidders to continue responding with v2.2 if they are not ready for the newer v3.0 or v4.0.
Other product or Help Center updates
Structured User Agent support in OpenRTB
Google has begun launching support for OpenRTB 2.6, starting with the Structured UserAgent field: BidRequest.device.sua. Additional fields will be supported throughout Q1 2023.
Q4 2022
There were no release notes for December 26, 2022.
There were no release notes for December 12, 2022.
Other product or Help Center updates
Minimum rendering time for video assets now 5 seconds
We now support a minimum view time of 5 seconds before the close button appears to a user on Open Auction interstitial App Video impressions, to provide you with the ability to render your video asset for a minimum of 5 seconds when serving in a interstitial App Video impression.Other product or Help Center updates
Inline install for rewarded and interstitial video inventory in iOS
Starting this week, we support inline install for rewarded and interstitial video inventory on iOS which will allow users to download promoted apps without leaving the original app they were using. To benefit from this change, bidders will need to respond withBidResponse.ad.advertised_app_id via the Google RTB protocol. Bidders integrated via the OpenRTB protocol can return this value via the BidResponse.seatbid.bid.bundle field. This app ID returned will be used to render an inline app store listing when the user clicks the app install ads.Other product or Help Center updates
Mismatched currency filtering
Starting in November 2022, Google will no longer filter bid responses which have a currency which does not match that of the bidder or account set currency. If a bid response indicates a currency, we will use this currency, regardless of whether it matches the bidder or account settings. If no currency is indicated, the bidder or account set currency will be used.Real-time bidding
Updates to bid request signal on inventory with increased privacy protections
Google has generalized the User Agent string and redacted the IP address field on bid requests for inventory with increased privacy protections. An example of inventory with increased privacy protections affected by these changes is non-personalized ads. See a complete list of the types of inventory subject to these additional privacy protections.
Q3 2022
No releases
There were no release notes for September 26, 2022.
Troubleshoot
Version deprecated in Creatives API
The creative version field in the Creatives API has been deprecated.
Policy
Authorized Buyers US Gambling and Games policies update
The Authorized Buyers Gambling and Games policy was updated on September 12, 2022 to allow state-licensed gambling entities to promote online gambling in certain US states.
Any advertisers who wish to promote online gambling content in the permitted US states are required to submit a gambling certification request through the updated policy page.
Improving inventory identification in ad_block_key and tag_id
We previously identified that ad_block_key and tag_id returned a value of =1 in some mApp requests. We have now improved the population rate of these fields, which are used for identifying publisher inventory slots.
No releases
There were no release notes for August 15, 2022.
Real-time bidding
Web interstitials for Open Bidding
Open Bidding buyers can now access web interstitial inventory. Interstitials are full-page web ads that appear between page views. Being able to compete for this inventory provides a new opportunity for impactful ads that respect Better Ads Standards. Activation is required for eligibility.
Other product or Help Center updates
Supporting SKAdNetwork 2.2 View-Through Attribution for non-interstitial ads
Google RTB now supports SKAdNetwork view-through attribution for non-interstitial ads on all iOS inventory. In addition, Apple now supports multiple active impression timers via Google’s Mobile Ads SDK (GMA) on iOS 15.4+ inventory, which allows for multiple view-through attribution ads concurrently.
Q2 2022
User interface
New Inventory Manager user role for Open Bidders
A new Inventory Manager role has been added to the Open Bidders account user roles. Administrators can grant users this role, which allows them to approve or disapprove publishers and gives them access to the troubleshooting and reporting tabs.
This new role creates the opportunity for Open Bidders to involve their operations early on without oversharing information or privileges within the application. It also allows their teams to onboard publishers at a faster rate by reducing the wait time for team-lead availability.
Real-time bidding
Google Ad Manager support for IPv6
Ad Manager has begun transitioning to send IPv6 ad request endpoints to all bidders. To minimize impact on forecasting and delivery based on IPv4, this will be done in a phase ramp up over the following months.
Real-time bidding
Is_default field removed from bid request
Google will remove the CreativeEnforcementSettings.is_default field from the bid request. This field had previously been included to indicate that the default settings for policy and protection filtering was in the default state. The remaining details in CreativeEnforcementSettings will continue to be populated as normal.
Bidders should continue to read the CreativeEnforcementSettings in the bid request to understand if a publisher has applied policies and/or protections to their demand. If creative enforcements have been applied, bid responses which do not meet these requirements will be filtered.
Denormalization PG/PD of flattened bid requests on video pod bids
TV commercial breaks have multiple ads shown back-to-back. Instead of receiving one bid request for the entire commercial break (which may be 3 minutes long), if you flatten bid requests, each ad in the commercial break will be sent as distinct bid requests. In certain cases for optimized pods, Programmatic Guaranteed and Preferred Deals are separated into their own bid requests because bids for these kinds of demand sources can only win in one pod position. This avoids sending duplicate bid requests for demand that can only win once per pod.
Policy
Sensitive inventory available to Authorized Buyers
In June, Google will be increasing the scope of sensitive inventory which is sent to Authorized Buyers. As a result, you may see additional requests for sensitive inventory unless you have blocked the category in your pretargeting controls. Learn more about sensitive categories in Authorized Buyers.
Real-time bidding
Google Ad Manager support for IPv6
Starting May 2022, Ad Manager will transition to sending IPv6 ad request endpoints to all bidders. To minimize impact on forecasting and delivery based on IPv4, this will be done in a phase ramp up over the following months.
Other product or Help Center updates
Non-SSL endpoint support deprecation
We will be deprecating non-SSL endpoint support for real-time bidding to protect data-in-transit. It is not expected for this change to be impactful as existing non-SSL callouts are minimal. Learn more about securing RTB callouts.
Sign up to participate in Topics Origin Trial testing
Google Chrome recently started a Topics Origin Trial. Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding partners who’d like to participate in testing can sign up to be included. Google will begin sending Topics information provided by the user's browser to interested partners on a small fraction of bid requests for web inventory, subject to the existing privacy controls.
Support for publisher-managed creatives in Programmatic Guaranteed deals
There is now limited Authorized Buyers support for publisher-managed creatives in Programmatic Guaranteed deals. “Limited support” means integration work may be needed to use the feature. Work with your account team to learn more.
User interface
Dayparting is negotiable in proposals
In a proposal, publishers can specify the days or parts of days (“Set days and times”) when ads can show. Now, these settings are visible to buyers in the proposal during negotiation. Also, any updates to the “Set days and times” settings require renegotiation and buyer approval.
Other product or Help Center updates
New publisher control to give buyers permission to collect and store user data
Beginning on April 6, publishers will have a new control in their accounts to give buyers permission to collect user data from impressions won on their inventory. Buyers will receive the new field allow_user_data_collection = {true, false} to indicate if the publisher has granted permission. Non-personalized ads (NPA) requests will not allow user data collection.
On this same date, Authorized Buyers Program Guidelines will be updated. As outlined under this policy, buyers must respect this publisher permission. When a publisher has granted permission to the buyer, the buyer will also be allowed to leverage the user profiles collected based on impressions won through the Authorized Buyers auction to inform their bidding on third-party exchanges. This policy will begin to take effect on May 11, 2022.
NativeAd.click_tracking_url(s) field deprecation
The click_tracking_url(s) in the NativeAd field in the Google Authorized Buyers protocol will be deprecated by the end of Q2 2022. Bidders can now use the Ad field to populate click-tracking URLs for bids with native ads and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals. The NativeAd field will remain in the OpenRTB proto.
Japan’s Amended APPI came into force on April 1, 2022
In June 2020, the Japanese government introduced a set of amendments to the existing Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI). The Amended APPI came into force on April 1, 2022.
The Amended APPI, amongst other things, includes rules relating to the processing of “personally referable information” (“PRI”) of Japanese users. The Amended APPI will require companies to, when providing PRI of Japanese users to a third party who will likely associate that data with 'Personal Information', confirm with the recipient that the recipient has obtained consent from data subjects to the recipient's processing, and record recipient's confirmation. PRI typically takes the form of information collected by identifiers that do not in themselves identify a specific individual (for example, a cookie ID) and are not stored alongside Personal Data (as defined in the APPI).
If you receive PRI (referred to in the policy as non-personally identifiable user information) relating to Japanese users from Google in connection with your use of Google's platform products, you must not merge that information with personally-identifiable information unless, prior to such processing, you have obtained all legally required consents from the user and have provided Google with accurate and complete information about the processing via the Google Ads Data Protection Terms Troubleshooter.
Your handling of PRI must conform to the requirements of the Amended APPI as well as the Platforms program polices.
Q1 2022
Other product or Help Center updates
Updates to semi-transparent URLs in Open Bidding
We have updated the treatment of semi-transparent URLs in Open Bidding. Previously, semi-transparency was not enforced on requests to exchanges participating in Open Bidding. Semi-transparency is now enforced across all programmatic demand.
Other product or Help Center updates
Express your interest in FLEDGE Origin Trials testing
Google Chrome is planning to start the FLEDGE Origin Trials in the coming months. Google is working toward supporting FLEDGE Origin Trials testing on Ad Manager inventory for its Authorized Buyers partners. We’d like to provide Authorized Buyers with the opportunity to collaborate and learn with us in this journey. You can express your interest to participate in the FLEDGE Origin Trials in this form.
User interface
Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding Reporting page has a new look
The Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding platforms have a new look to the Reporting tab. This update may alter your previous workflows when interacting with the tool. However, the functionality of the Reporting tool won’t change.