Conditional Ad Units

The Size Mapping and Advanced Size Mapping features are useful for standard responsive ad designs, but a number of other scenarios are supported as well.

By supporting these scenarios, header bidding can be more efficient; the browser can send bids to a more surgical set of bidders based on device size or other attributes the page code can create.

The basic steps are:

  1. Build up an array of ‘labels’ from two sources: as an output of sizeConfig, as an optional argument to requestBids(), or both.
  2. Apply label targeting to AdUnits or specific bids.

See the Publisher API reference for syntax.

Some Bidders Should Be Skipped for Some Devices

The following example uses Size Mapping. See the Advanced Size Mapping module for another way to handle this scenario. Note that you must use Advanced Size Mapping for mediaTypes other than banner.

Say a particular bidder is focused on mobile phone demand, so it’s really not worthwhile to send them requests from display or tablets.

We’ll start with how to set up the labels from sizeConfig:


pbjs.setConfig({
  sizeConfig: [{
       mediaQuery: '(min-width: 1200px)',
       sizesSupported: [[970,90], [728,90], [300,250], [160,600]],
       labels: [ "display"]
     }, {
       mediaQuery: '(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1199px)',
       sizesSupported: [[468,60], [300,250], [160,600]],
       labels: [ "tablet"]
     }, {
       mediaQuery: '(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 767px)',
       sizesSupported: [[300,50],[320,50],[120,20],[168,28]],
       labels: [ "phone"]
  }]
});

In the above sizeConfig, labels are applied for each of the 3 screen sizes that can later be used in conditional ad unit logic. Now you need to label your AdUnits to match. For example:


var AdUnits = [{
    code: "ad-slot-1",
    mediaTypes: {
        banner: {
            sizes: [[768,90], [468,60], [320,50]]
        }
    },
    bids: [
        {
            bidder: "bidderA",
            params: {
                placement: "1000"
            }
       },{
            bidder: "mobileBidder",
            labelAny: ["phone"],  // this bid only applies to small screensizes
            params: {
                placement: "2000"
            }
       }
   ]
}]

How this works:

  1. Users with a screen width of 767px and under will cause the third media query to fire.
  2. This rule puts “phone” into the label array and a list of sizes into sizesSupported
  3. Then the AdUnit is processed:
    1. The first bid doesn’t have any conditional logic, so is present in every auction.
    2. The second bid requires that “phone” be present in the label array, otherwise it won’t be part of the auction.

Some Bidders Have Different Parameters for Different Devices

For reporting and targeting purposes, Publishers and SSPs sometimes break out different inventory structures for different platforms.

For instance, say that a given bidder wants to define different placements for different devices according to this table:

Device Placement ID
Display 1111
Phones and tablets 2222

Using the Size Mapping Approach (Banner only)

Assuming the same sizeConfig as in the first use case above, the AdUnit would contain bids for both placements, but the conditional labelAny is added to them both. This will cause the bid to be fired only if one or more of the strings in the array matches a defined label.


var AdUnits = [{
    code: "ad-slot-1",
    mediaTypes: {
        banner: {
            sizes: [[768,90], [468,60], [320,50]]
        }
    },
    bids: [
        {
            bidder: "bidderA",
            labelAny: ["display"],
            params: {
                placement: "1111"
            }
       },{
            bidder: "bidderA",
            labelAny: ["phone", "tablet"],
            params: {
                placement: "2222"
            }
       }
   ]
}]

How this works:

  1. Users with a screen width of 1000px will cause the second media query to fire.
  2. The second media query rule puts “tablet” into the label array and a list of sizes into sizesSupported.
  3. Then the AdUnit is processed:
    1. The first bid requires that the label “display” be present in the array. It’s not, so that bid is skipped.
    2. The second bid requires that either “phone” or “tablet” be present. Since tablet is in the label array, that bid is activated and the correct placement is sent to bidderA.

Using the Advanced Size Mapping Approach for Different Bidder Params

Here’s another way of doing the same thing as shown in the previous section:


var AdUnits = [{
    code: "ad-slot-1",
    mediaTypes: {
        banner: {
            sizes: [[768,90], [468,60], [320,50]]
        }
    },
    bids: [
        {
            bidder: "bidderA",
            sizeConfig: [
                { minViewPort: [0, 0], relevantMediaTypes: ['none'] },
                { minViewPort: [1200, 0], relevantMediaTypes: ['banner'] }
            ],
            params: {
                placement: "1111"
            }
       },{
            bidder: "bidderA",
            sizeConfig: [
                { minViewPort: [0, 0], relevantMediaTypes: ['banner'] },
                { minViewPort: [1200, 0], relevantMediaTypes: ['none'] }
            ],
            params: {
                placement: "2222"
            }
       }
   ]
}]

Some Ad Unit Auctions Should Be Skipped Entirely for Some Devices

Say there’s a responsive page where one of the ad units only supports larger sizes, so it doesn’t make sense on phones. To suppress the ad unit for mobile users, we can apply conditional logic to the entire ad unit. Here’s an example using the size mapping approach (banner only):


var AdUnits = [{
    code: "ad-slot-1",
    mediaTypes: {
        banner: {
            sizes: [[768,90]]
        }
    },
    labelAny: ["display", "tablet"], // skip the ad unit entirely for phones
    bids: [
        {
            bidder: "bidderA",  // no conditions
            params: {
                placement: "1111"
            }
       },{
            bidder: "tabletBidder",
            labelAny: ["tablet"], // additional conditions can be applied to bids
            params: {
                placement: "2222"
            }
       }
   ]
}]

See the Advanced Size Mapping module if you need to do something like this for video.

Some Bid Requests Apply Only to Users Originating from Certain Countries

Labels aren’t constrained to describing device size – they can be used for many types of conditions the page maywant to define. Besides being defined as part of sizeConfig, labels can also be passed into the requestBids() function as an argument.

A specific use case: suppose that a certain bidder doesn’t have a data center outside of a certain region. It’s really not worth sending them bid requests for users outside of their geographic area. Assuming the page can figure out where the user’s from, a label can be implemented and applied to make the bid conditional.

// page logic determines the 'europeanUser' boolean
If (europeanUser) {
    reqArgs={labels:['eur']};
}
pbjs.requestBids(reqArgs);

Then this label can be applied to conditions in the AdUnit just like labels that originate from sizeConfig. E.g.

var AdUnits = [{
    code: "ad-slot-1",
    mediaTypes: {
        banner: {
            sizes: [[768,90], [468,60], [320,50]]      
        }
    },
    bids: [
       {
            bidder: "euroMobileBidder",
            labelAll: ["eur", "phone"],
            params: {
                placement: "9876"
            }
       },
       ...
   ]
}]

This example shows that the ‘euroMobileBidder’ is only interested in receiving bids that have both labels:

  • “eur” as passed into requestBids()
  • “phone” as created by sizeConfig

Further Reading