RTB pass through is a powerful feature that lets you ping ring trees and static targets in your routing plan during the real-time bidding (RTB) ping to get information like target acceptance and revenue. This lets you set a margin between the potential publisher payout and the target revenue. You can also reject the publisher's request if your ring tree targets (or static targets) are not available or do not return a bid.

Ringba can also reroute calls to your RTB pass through campaigns if the winning target does not connect. See the How does Reroute Work in RTB Pass Through Campaigns section later in this article.

Note: Contact your Account Manager to activate RTB pass through for your Ringba account.

Note: Currently RTB pass through does not support webhook conversions.

This article contains the following sections:

Set Up Default RTB Pass-Through Settings for Campaigns
How Reroute Works in RTB Pass Through Campaigns
Override Default Pass-Through Settings for Publishers
Use Cases
- Margin Needed but with a Max Bid Amount for Publishers
- Static Bids with No Margin Needed

Set Up Default RTB Pass-Through Settings for Campaigns

You must enable RTB pass through for each campaign where you want to use it. Use the following steps to do this:

Open your campaign and click the Real Time Bidding tab
Scroll to the Pass Through Settings section.
Toggle on the Enabled switch to show the fields where you set the default campaign settings for RTB pass through.

Once you toggle on the Enabled switch, the following fields appear:

Max Bid (required): Maximum bid amount regardless of any adjustments.
Allow Bids at Loss: Toggle on this switch to make it possible to lose money on a bid.
Important: Do not enable this feature unless you specifically want a loss as a potential outcome.
Bid Margin Type: Choose Percentage to enter a percentage in the following two fields. Choose Amount to enter a flat dollar amount in the following two fields.
Bid Margin: The margin percentage or dollar amount reserved for you between buyer and seller. You can enter 0 or a positive value.
Min Bid Margin After Adjustments: The minimum margin percentage or dollar amount that is reserved for you between buyer and seller after applying bid modifiers. You can enter 0 or a positive value. If the first target does not answer the call, Ringba also uses this information to determine whether the target is eligible to receive the rerouted call.
Min Call Duration for Payout: Select how the minimum call length for a bid to be paid out is calculated. There are three options:
- Use target duration: This is the default value for RTB pass through. If you select this value, the duration matches the duration received from the winning target.
- Override target duration: If you select this value, the bid duration is always a set value. A new field, Min Duration Override, appears where you enter the set value.
- Adjust from target duration: If you select this value, the duration from the target is increased by a set value. A new field, Duration Adjustment, appears where you enter the increase. You can enter only positive numbers in this field to increase the duration; you cannot decrease the duration. Example: If the target/ring tree target converts in 30 seconds and you enter 3 seconds for the Duration Adjustment, then only calls that last at least 33 seconds pay out.

How Reroute Works in RTB Pass Through Campaigns

The reroute process happens when a publisher sends a call after the bidding process, but the winning target does not pick up the call. The reroute process chooses the next eligible target so the call is not lost.

However, at this point in the process, you can't change the bid you sent to the publisher. Ringba calculated the bid based on the revenue and conversion criteria settings of the first eligible target and sent that bid to the publisher. The target to which you reroute the call might have different revenue and conversion criteria settings, which could result in a call that doesn't make money for you.

You can customize your settings to maximize your profit on rerouted calls. The following settings control rerouted calls:

Min Bid Margin After Adjustments: Ringba calculates the profit you would earn on the call if the target converts and compares that bid you already sent to the publisher. If the difference is greater than or equal to the value in this field, the target is eligible to receive the rerouted call.
Min Call Duration for Payout: Revenue recovery also considers the Min Call Duration for Payout setting to reroute a call. The system checks whether the next available target has a duration equal to or less than the original target, or if the next target has an event that converts before the event sent to the publisher to generate payout. Therefore, the system considers the Min Call Duration for Payout setting, in addition to the Min Bid Margin after Adjustment setting, when determining whether the next target is eligible to receive the rerouted call.

Example

You configure the bid amount in the Pass Through Settings to reserve $10 for you. The Min Bid Margin After Adjustments value is $5 and Min Call Duration for Payout field is set to Use Target Duration.

Target A: Priority 1 generates revenue of $100 in 60 seconds call length from connection
Target B: Priority 2 generates revenue of $94 if Call Successfully Connected
Target C: Priority 3 generates revenue of $95 in 120 seconds call length from connection
Target D: Priority 4 generates revenue of $98 in 30 seconds call length from connection

The bid you sent to the publisher is the revenue amount from Target A minus the $10 reserved for you:

$100 - $10 = $90

However, Target A does not answer the call. To prevent losing the call, the system checks whether Target B, C, or D meet criteria to be rerouted to.

Since Min Bid Margin After Adjustment is set to $5, the minimum target bid accepted would be $95 and since Min Call Duration for Payout is set to Use Target Duration, the maximum event and duration accepted would be the Targets A conversion criteria: 60 seconds call length from connection. For that reason:

Target B is ineligible with a bid of only $94 (< $95)
Target C is ineligible with a duration of 120 secs (> 60 seconds)
Target D is eligible to be routed to with a bid of $98 (> $95) bid and 30 secs (< 60 seconds) call length from connection.

Allow Bid at Loss

If you enable Allow Bids at Loss, the reroute function doesn't filter out any targets; all those that have a valid bid become eligible to reroute.

Override Default Pass-Through Settings for a Publisher

Important: If you toggle on the Override Default Pass Through Settings switch, Ringba overrides ALL the Pass Through Settings for this publisher with the values from this section. Even if you enter an override value in only one field and leave the rest untouched, Ringba uses all the override values instead of the default campaign values. This means:

If you leave a field blank, Ringba interprets it as a 0 value, not as the default campaign value.
If you leave a field set to the same value as the campaign, then update the campaign later, the override value does not change.

You can go back to using the campaign values at any time by toggling off the Override Default Pass Through Settings switch.

If you want to override the settings per publisher, follow these steps:

Open the RTB pass through campaign.
On the Campaign Settings tab, scroll to the Publishers section.
Find the publisher for which you want to override the pass-through settings and click the Override Campaign Configuration Settings icon in the Actions column.
A panel appears with settings you can override for this publisher.
Scroll to the Pass Through Settings section and toggle on the Override Default Pass Through Settings switch.

Fields appear where you can override the values. The fields are the same here as the settings described earlier in this article.

Use Cases

The following sections describe common ways you might want to set up your RTB pass through campaign.

Margin Needed but with a Max Bid Amount for Publishers

In this use case, the account owner has both ring tree targets and static targets. The account owner wants to always have a margin of 20% on all bids and bid the remaining value to the publisher, but the bid amount can't go over a certain threshold. For this example, the max bid is set to $40. If the buyer were to bid $100 for a call, the bid to the publisher would be $40.

Static Bids with No Margin Needed

In this use case, the account owner wants to have static bids for all RTB bids with no margin needed; however, pass through is still needed to check against an RTT response. For this example, we use $35 as the max bid amount and create a Bid Modifier with the option to always override by the value you want.

Note: It is important to set both field and bid modifier to configure this use case.

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