Features in Beta phase might not be available in your network. Watch the release notes for when this feature becomes generally available.
Bid responses from third-party bidders are screened before they enter the auction. During the screening process, some bids are rejected from entering the auction. This is called bid response filtering. Filtered bids represent lost bid opportunities.
Filtering Assist allows bidders to reduce their pre-auction bid filtering by helping them to avoid submitting bids with creatives that are likely to be filtered. With Filtering Assist, there’s no need for bidders to implement and maintain logic to adapt to the evolving system of publisher settings, Google policies, and creative verification.
Filtering Assist is available for Authorized Buyers (General Availability) and Open Bidding (Beta). Please contact your account manager to have Filtering Assist added to your account.
How Filtering Assist works
Filtering Assist provides bidders a list of creative IDs they should not bid with because the creatives are likely to be filtered. This list is found in the excluded_creatives field in the bid request. To avoid wasting the impression opportunity and to have a better chance of winning in the auction, the bidder can choose a different creative to bid with which is more likely not to be filtered.
Filtering Assist builds a creative dataset based on previously filtered creatives. Creatives must be filtered at least once before they are able to appear in the excluded_creatives field in the bid request.
For more information about the excluded_creatives field, see the RTB protocol and OpenRTB developer documentation.
Filtering Assist and the Creatives API
Filtering Assist is an alternative (or complement) to a bidder integrating with the Creatives API depending on the level of control bidders would like to have in determining creative eligibility.
The Creatives API requires the bidder to invest in development work to read publisher settings and Google policies, implement logic to determine each creative’s eligibility, and return creatives accordingly.
Filtering Assist does not require maintenance from the bidder. Google will update logic on the bidder’s behalf.