My PMP deal is not delivering
A deal-specific decision tree for a private marketplace deal that transacts poorly — confirm the seat, the country rows, the deal ID, the deal floor, competing demand and creative scan, in the order the ad server checks them.
A buyer says a private marketplace deal wins nothing — or far less than agreed. A deal adds one more filter on top of everything that gates ordinary programmatic demand, and that filter has moving parts on the buyer’s side (the seat and deal ID their DSP returns) that you don’t control. Work through the checks below in order — they run from the most frequent cause to the rarest, which is not exactly the order the ad server applies them in, so the first one that fails is usually the answer.
Before you start, rule out the ordinary causes: a deal only delivers where the campaign it lives on would deliver anyway. If the campaign’s OpenRTB banners aren’t reaching the auction at all, the deal never gets a chance. Run My ad is not serving first if Requests are zero for the partner — this page assumes bid requests are going out and the deal specifically is the problem.
Who this is for
Network managers running programmatic PMP deals. The RTB PMP deals card on a campaign needs the RTB PMP Deals permission, which no stock role holds — your network administrator grants it in Admin → Users & access → User roles & permissions. Two of the checks below, DSP partners analytics and creative-scan verdicts, live in the admin area (Admin → Demand partners (DSP)); a role that holds DSP Partners Analytics or DSP Creative Scan also sees them at Account → RTB, but neither permission is on for any non-administrator role until an administrator grants it — so loop in your network administrator for those.
The one thing that makes a deal measurable
If you can’t tell whether the deal is delivering, fix this first: one campaign per deal. Reports have no per-deal dimension, so several deals on one campaign blend into a single set of numbers and you can’t separate them. When a campaign carries exactly one deal, that campaign’s impressions, revenue and eCPM are the deal’s — see Sell premium inventory through PMP private deals. Everything below assumes you can read the deal’s delivery this way.
Check 1 — is the buyer’s seat still the one you entered?
This is first because it changes most often. A bid that carries the right deal ID but comes
from a different seat than the Buyer ID on the deal row is rejected as an invalid
deal bid — the seat must appear in the deal’s buyer-seat list (wseat) or the whole seat-bid
is dropped.
- Re-confirm the seat ID with the buyer. DSPs rotate or split seats far more often than they change deal IDs; a deal that “suddenly went quiet” is usually a seat that moved.
- Fix it on Account → Advertisers → advertiser → campaign → RTB PMP deals → edit the row’s Buyer ID.
- The deal ID and the seat are matched together: a bid whose deal ID belongs to a row with a different seat is dropped as an invalid deal even when Private auction is off.
Corner case: the ad server logs the mismatch. When your network administrator has a troubleshooting log task covering the request (Admin → Audit & diagnostics → Troubleshooting log tasks), the record reads “Invalid seatbid for private PMP request with buyerId(wseat)=… and dealId=…” (private auction) or “Request doesn’t have imp with pmp dealID=… and seatID=…” — ask your network administrator to pull it for the placement and time window; it names the seat the buyer actually sent versus the one you configured.
Check 2 — do the deal’s Country rows cover the traffic?
Country matching on a deal is exact, and this interacts badly with Private auction.
- A deal row is attached to a bid request only when the request’s country matches that row
(or the row is Global /
*). Traffic in a country with no matching row carries no deal. - With Private auction on, an impression that ends up with no eligible deal is an invalid private request — the platform sends no bid request at all for it. So a private, country-scoped deal is silently dark everywhere outside its listed countries.
Compare the deal’s Country rows against where the buyer expects volume. If the buyer reports missing geos, this is the most common cause.
Corner case — unresolved geo: when the visitor’s country can’t be resolved (VPNs, internal IPs, geo-lookup gaps), country-scoped rows are not attached — only a Global row keeps the deal in play on that traffic. If the deal must always ride along, add a Global row (see the geo corner cases in ad-not-serving Check 6).
Check 3 — does the deal ID match what the DSP returns?
The deal ID is a string both sides reference, and it must match exactly. On a private
auction, a bid whose dealId is empty, or doesn’t match any deal on the impression, is
dropped and the runner-up (if any) takes over.
- Copy the deal ID from the buyer’s DSP verbatim into the row — watch for trailing spaces, case, and lookalike characters.
- Ask the buyer to confirm their DSP is sending the deal ID back in the bid, not just targeting it. A DSP that bids into the deal but omits the deal ID on the response looks identical to “no bid” on your side.
Corner case: in a troubleshooting log task, a wrong or absent deal ID on a private auction is logged as “Invalid bid for private PMP request with dealId …”. That message means the bid arrived but was rejected — different from the partner never bidding, which shows as zero bids in DSP partners analytics.
Check 4 — is the deal floor priced where the buyer actually bids?
A valid deal bid skips your open-auction floors and is judged against the deal floor instead — the deal terms are the contract, in both directions:
- A deal floor set above what the buyer is willing to bid means every deal bid falls short and loses. If the buyer says “I’m bidding $X but winning nothing”, compare $X against the row’s Bid floor.
- A deal floor below your normal placement/site floors will still clear — the deal floor overrides them. That’s intended, but it means a deal you priced too low can quietly underdeliver revenue while looking like it “delivers”.
A bid below the floor is dropped, and a troubleshooting log task records it as “Bid price (…) less than pmp bid floor …”. Adjust the row’s Bid floor to match the negotiated price, then re-check delivery.
Check 5 — is other demand outbidding the deal?
Unless the campaign is deal-only, the deal competes with everything else:
- With Private auction off, deal bids and open-auction bids from the same partner — and any direct campaigns on the same placement — compete on price/priority. A higher-paying direct campaign or a stronger open bid simply wins the slot.
- To make the campaign deal-only, turn Private auction on so only deal bids are accepted on it, and use campaign priority and linking to steer the slots the deal should fill. Epom has no guaranteed-delivery deal type — a deal is an auction, so none of this reserves volume (see PMP deal types compared).
Verify with a report grouped by the deal’s campaign: if impressions exist but are lower than promised, the deal is being outbid, not filtered.
Check 6 — is the creative being blocked by scan?
On networks that scan DSP creatives, a creative that is Blocked is dropped from the auction before it can win, and the runner-up serves instead. A deal whose buyer keeps sending one flagged creative will look like it never delivers.
- Verdicts are on Admin → Demand partners (DSP) → DSP creative scan, and at Account → RTB → DSP creative scan for a role that holds DSP Creative Scan. Ask your network administrator to check the buyer’s creative(s) for this partner.
- A Passed creative delivers; a Blocked one won’t until the buyer swaps it. See creative policy protection and ad-not-serving Check 10.
Check 7 — the ordinary ad-serving gates still apply
A deal doesn’t bypass the rest of the platform. If checks 1–6 pass and delivery is still short, the deal’s campaign is subject to the same filters as any campaign:
- Everything in the demand chain (banner → campaign → advertiser) and supply chain (placement → zone → site) must be on and linked.
- The campaign’s own targeting, capping and limits are the deal’s delivery controls — a tight frequency cap or a reached limit throttles the deal too.
- The partner-level Max QPS and timeouts throttle bid requests before deals are even evaluated.
Run the full My ad is not serving ladder against the deal’s campaign to catch these.
When you escalate
Give your network administrator: the deal ID and Buyer ID (seat) as configured, the campaign ID, the countries where volume is missing, the time window, and what DSP partners analytics shows for the partner (Requests / Bids / Wins). If a troubleshooting log task covers the traffic, the “Invalid bid…” / “Invalid seatbid…” / “…less than pmp bid floor…” lines pinpoint whether bids are arriving and being rejected versus never arriving at all.
