What is Bid Rate?

The rate of ad requests that attract at least one bid from advertisers during real-time bidding auctions.

Bid rate is a term commonly used in programmatic advertising. It indicates the rate of ad requests that attract at least one bid from advertisers during real-time bidding (RTB) auctions. The metric indicates how engaged demand partners are with a publisher's inventory and how effective the auction process is in responding to available ad space.

Why It Matters

Bid rate helps publishers analyze demand engagement and auction effectiveness. Higher bid rates generally reflect competitive bidding environments and indicate strong demand from advertisers for the publisher's inventory. Low bid rates might indicate issues with inventory quality, targeting capabilities, or demand partner mix.

How to Calculate

Bid rate is calculated by dividing the number of successful bid responses by the total number of bid requests, then multiplying by 100. For example, if there are 100,000 bid requests and 10,000 bid responses: (10,000 ÷ 100,000) × 100 = 10% bid rate.

Industry Benchmarks

Best Practices

To increase bid rate: improve brand safety measures, enhance ad inventory quality and relevance, integrate more quality demand partners, check for technical or integration issues, and ensure proper auction setup and configuration.

Examples

A gaming app might see higher bid rates for rewarded video inventory compared to banner inventory. Publishers with premium demographics and high user engagement typically achieve higher bid rates across all formats.

Notes

A low bid rate doesn't always indicate poor performance - it can be connected with bidder behavior where advertisers have specific policies about geos or app verticals they bid on. High bid rates don't guarantee high fill rates, as bids still need to win auctions.