Programmatic: WTF is Throttling? 🤔

The other day, a publisher told me: "While comparing reports from my Ad Server and one of my SSPs, I realized there was a 50% loss in Bid Requests (BR) between the two tools." 😲

🕵️He had just stumbled upon a phenomenon that is still too often misunderstood in the programmatic ecosystem : Throttling

You see, SSPs face a significant economic constraint 💵:

• Their business model is based on a commission taken from each sale.
• However, their infrastructure costs depend partly on the volume of Bid Requests / Bid Responses they have to process.

With the rise of Header Bidding wrappers, SSPs can now be easily connected multiple times to the same site.
For example, on Le Monde’s website—which has one of the cleanest programmatic stacks on the market (scoring 9/10 on Sellers.Guide)—the ads.txt file reveals:
16 Xandr seats
14 Magnite seats
13 Equativ seats
13 PubMatic seats
...and so on.

The problem: Being connected 10 times doesn't multiply an SSP's sales by 10, but it certainly multiplies their infrastructure costs. 😲💸

To protect their margins, SSPs have implemented Throttling algorithms. 🤖💡

How does it work?

For every combination of: [ad slot x site x format x device]
The SSP analyzes the [revenue generated / BR volume] ratio. If the yield is deemed too low, it cuts off 🛑 a large portion of Bid Requests to safeguard its margin. 🛡️💰

⚠️ The catch?

While these algorithms are effective, they aren't optimal... They ignore several dimensions that are nonetheless crucial for DSP bidding algorithms:
🍪 Presence of a cookie ID: Still vital in 2025 for targeting and frequency capping.
👀 Viewability rate: Mandatory to pass Prebid filters.
📍 Geolocation / Language: Non-local IPs don't perform well on national campaigns.
📶 Connection type: Wi-Fi > 3G/4G.
⏰ Time of day: High bot activity during the night.

👉 The result: High-quality Bid Requests can be blocked by SSP Throttling due to a lack of granularity in the filtering process.

💡 GreyFox Ads Recommendation:

Publishers can partially bypass these limits... by adding granularity to their tagging plan!
➡️ By isolating the most qualitative Bid Requests into dedicated ad slots, the resulting ratios will improve. Throttling will then automatically decrease, unlocking new high-value impressions. 📈😊

At GreyFox Ads, we beleive the quality OpenWeb brings real efficiency to advertisers. We are the smallest Ad Network in France, but not the least competent : we've created Master Deals to bring Media Traders :
⭐clean supply,
⭐smart targeting,
⭐simplicity,
⭐cost transparency.

You want to work with a quality partner to operate Video/Display programmatic campaign on the french market ?
📩 Contact GreyFox Ads !

Link to original post : https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7468179873996640257