When you pay per-ping charges, receiving unnecessary pings is a real problem for you. But it isn't limited to just you: if your publisher is pinging you too much, and you're using real-time bidding (RTB) with passthrough, you're passing too many pings to your buyer, which costs them money too and can damage your relationship.
This article contains the following sections:
Capping the Pings you Receive
Ringba offers controls you can use to limit the number of pings you receive. You can set caps for entire campaigns or for individual publishers. You can also block bids that don't meet your requirements, so you don't waste money on them.
Identifying high-ping publishers
You can find valuable information about your publishers by using the Reporting > Real Time Bidding tool. This screen contains an RTB Breakdown by Publisher section where you can see which publishers are sending you a lot of bids but not a lot of calls.
Tip: Set the time frame for the report to be at least one week to get a fairer representation of the pings over time.
Receiving a lot of bids but not winning a lot is a reason to limit the publisher. See the Overriding the Campaign Cap by Publisher section later in this article.
If, on the other hand, you receive a lot of bids and reject a lot of them, you can update your bid modifiers to filter out bids that don't meet your requirements. See the Using Bid Modifiers to Filter Pings section later in this article.
Capping publisher pings for a campaign
An easy way to reduce the number of incoming pings in your RTB campaign is to set a limit. Use the following steps to cap the number of publisher pings for a campaign:
- Navigate to Campaigns and open the RTB campaign you want to limit.
- Click the Real-Time Bidding tab to open it.
- Scroll to the Rate Limit section.
- Reduce the number in the Maximum Requests field and consider the time-period value you selected in the drop-down list next to the field. Then save your changes.
By default, the limit is 10 pings Per Minute. The value you enter in this field is the maximum number of pings you can receive from each publisher on the campaign in the time period you choose.
Important: This number applies to each publisher. If you have 40 publishers on a campaign and allow 10 pings per minute, you can receive up to 400 pings per minute. If your cumulative number of pings per minute for a campaign gets over 1000, you may see performance problems.
Overriding the campaign cap by publisher
You can override ping cap on the campaign for individual publishers. If you have one problem publisher who sends too many pings, especially if they are not sending many calls, you can create a lower limit for that specific publisher. Alternatively, if you want to let one publisher avoid the cap, you can create a higher limit for that publisher.
Use the following steps:
- Navigate to Campaigns and open the campaign where you want to limit the publisher. This time, stay on the Campaign Settings tab.
- Scroll to the Publishers section of the screen.
- Find the publisher you want to limit and click the Override Campaign Configuration Settings icon in the Actions column.
A panel of controls appears. - In the Set Real Time Bidding Settings for {publisher} section, toggle on the Override Real Time Bidding Settings switch.
More controls appear. - In the Rate Limit section, toggle on the Override Rate Limit Settings switch. The Maximum Requests field and time period drop-down appear.
- Enter the ping limit you want for this specific publisher and save your changes.
Using bid modifiers to filter pings
When you receive bids that don't have all the information you require, you can still spend money processing those pings. You can use bid modifiers to reject pings for incomplete bids and save money.
Bid modifiers are rules you set up in an RTB campaign to modify bids based on tag values before you pass the bid on. Usually, you set up bid modifiers to add, subtract, multiply, or override the bid based on the value in a tag. However, you can also use this tool to reject bids based on a tag value.
You set up bid modifiers on the Real Time Bidding tab of a campaign that has real-time bidding enabled. The Bid Modifiers section contains a table where you create a row for each bid modifier you want to create.
Note: The Bid Modifiers table can contain no more than 100 rows. If you need to include more than 100 rows, see Bulk RTB Bid Modifiers.
Use the following steps:
- Navigate to Campaigns and open the RTB campaign where you want to filter pings.
- Click the Real-Time Bidding tab to open it.
- Scroll to the Bid Modifiers section and click the Add New Modifiers button.
- Enter the name of the required tag in the Tag field.
- Select Required in the Logic field.
The remaining fields disappear when you choose the Required value. - Save the bid modifier.
Whenever a bid comes to this campaign without the required tag, Ringba rejects the bid with error code 1005 and does no further processing of the ping.
Note: If your publisher is having all their bids rejected, you may need to work with the publisher to make sure they are sending all the data you require.
Reducing the Pings you Send
Many times, reducing the pings you receive is enough by itself to solve the problem of sending too many pings: using RTB with pass through means the pings you receive become pings you send.
However, if you've gone through the first part of this article and are still having a problem with sending too many pings, there are still options you can try.
Filter ineligible targets before pinging
When you set up your ring tree targets, you configure options that help Ringba know whether the RTT is eligible for a particular call. For example, you configure the hours of operation, so the ring tree doesn’t bother sending a call to a call center that is closed.
The platform determines whether the RTT is eligible based on the values you enter in the following fields:
- Hours of Operation
- The Reroute Attempts field that appears if you enable Revenue Recovery
- Fields in the Cap Settings section, which can limit how many calls you send per hour, day, month, and overall
- Fields in the Concurrency Settings section, which can limit how many calls an RTT can have at a time
- Fields in the Restrict Duplicate Calls Settings section, which control calls from the same number going to the same target
- Values in the Tag Routing Filters section, which indicate characteristics a call must have to be sent to the RTT. For example, an RTT might take calls only from a certain ZIP Code.
See the procedure on creating ring tree targets in the Create a Ring Tree Target to Ping an RTB Campaign for step-by-step instructions.
Ask for more information from the buyer to optimize your setup
Buyers don't complain about pings that turn into calls. If your buyer is complaining about your pings, that must mean something about your pings isn't meeting their needs. So, get in touch with your buyer and customize your filters to send the buyer only the pings that are most relevant to them.
Ask your buyer for a report on why they’re rejecting your pings. If they’re using Ringba, you can use the RTB Error Codes to understand why your pings are being rejected. This information helps you target your filters, caps, and the data you include in your pings.
Controlling Pings FAQ and Troubleshooting
How does Ringba calculate the total number of pings?
Bids plus rejected bids plus rate-limited equals total pings.
Is it possible to rate limit pings for the same caller ID?
Ringba rate limits pings from the same publisher with the same tag values, including caller ID. See the RTB Pings section of the Why am I being rate-limited? article for details. However, if pings come from different publishers for the same caller ID, Ringba does not rate-limit them.