- Matching requests
- Buyer responses
- Eligible bids
- Wins and impressions
Use this sequence to organize the investigation. Confirm the details in the affected platform and campaign.
Active status confirms only part of the setup. It does not guarantee available inventory, eligible demand, or a playable creative. Compare the seller and buyer views for the same time window and deal.
A private marketplace deal and a programmatic guaranteed commitment have different buying and delivery arrangements. Confirm the transaction type and platform rules before interpreting floors, auction competition, or delivery expectations.
Follow the deal delivery funnel
- No deal requests: inspect inventory mapping, schedule, geography, format, and seller targeting.
- Requests but no bids: ask for buyer no-bid reasons and check budget, targeting, and creative readiness.
- Bids rejected: compare deal ID, seat, currency, price, creative policy, and format requirements.
- Eligible bids but no wins: inspect competition and the transaction's auction rules.
- Wins but few impressions: trace creative rendering and measurement.
Use one request to test the diagnosis
Keep the request ID, timestamp, impression ID where available, and deal ID together. Ask each partner to confirm what it received and why it acted on that request.
Confirm spend and delivery after the fix
Change the configuration responsible for the failure, then confirm progression through the previously blocked stage. Watch impressions and spend over an appropriate reporting interval, allowing for reporting delay.
Record the previous value, the correction, the evidence, and the owner. If the deal remains behind, calculate the remaining delivery requirement rather than assuming eligibility recovery has solved pacing.
Test your reasoning: Identify the funnel stage
Original simulated exercise. This is not a real client case.
An active deal has no recorded spend.
Evidence available
- The buyer received 8,000 requests.
- It returned zero bids.
- No rejection count is available because no bids were submitted.
Should you start by investigating why bids lose?
Read the answer and next check
No. The observed gap is between received requests and buyer bidding. Ask for buyer no-bid evidence and verify campaign eligibility and readiness.
Next check: Confirm whether the affected request can produce an eligible response before evaluating auction wins.