Code of Conduct

Competition is the key to generating the highest yield, but competition can only exist when the conditions of competition are unbiased and fair. In order to achieve this, partners must allow demand sources to simultaneously bid on a piece of inventory using industry standard practices, where price determines the winner. These principles laid out in the code of conduct below are fundamental guidelines for fair competition and will enable all parties to contribute towards building an open and transparent marketplace.

Definitions

For purposes of this Code of Conduct, “Tech” means any software owned and operated by a Meta partner that is used to select what ad to serve primarily based on bid. Tech includes, but is not limited to, bidders, wrappers, SSPs, and optimization layers (cloud based, tag based, or otherwise). Tech does not include a third-party ad server where the primary function is pacing the delivery of ads on direct sold inventory.

Revenue and Fees

• Highest bid wins, irrespective of type of auction.

• All bids must be submitted in net values, not gross values.

• The bid should not be altered at bid time (as an example of alteration: modifying bids in real time by looking at bids of other participants/demand sources).

• If an impression is deemed unviewable, illegal, fraudulent, machine generated or otherwise, the demand source should not be expected to pay the publisher for that impression.

• Fees charged for the use of Tech must be disclosed in advance to those parties being charged.

• All bid values must be submitted and processed in the same currency.

Data

• Tech should not collect or use data on publishers’ apps, including, but not limited to, audience data, user identity data, deal data and cookie data without the publishers’ permission.

• Demand sources, Tech and publishers should not use or sell data from demand sources without explicit permission.

• Tech who operate both a demand and supply business, shall not use any information collected as part of their supply business, to alter their bidding logic, including but not limited to segmenting users above and beyond segments that publishers create, reserving segments of users for Tech’s own demand, etc.

Technical Transparency and Auction Logic

• Auction logic and methodology should be transparent and disclosed to all parties in writing prior to commencement of a commercial relationship. Future material changes to auction logic must be disclosed to all parties with adequate explanation and anticipated impact or outcome.

• All demand sources must be called on all inventory and be allowed to compete for all inventory that a publisher makes available. For clarity, direct sold deals between a publisher and another demand source are exempt.

• All demand sources must compete in the final auction, which is defined as the last decisioning touchpoint before an ad is chosen for display in any app.

• Tech should ensure it is easy for publishers to allow bidders access to all inventory via the integration.

• Tech should not manipulate or alter any ad server call, including but not limited to speeding up or slowing down ad requests or setting different timeout thresholds for different partners. This does not include the time needed to process and collate bids.

• For non ad server partners, if the Tech mediates bids and only sends one bid to the ad server, it should be the highest bid out of each demand source’s final clearing price.

• Tech should not prioritize or favor any impression opportunity or bid from any demand source, including the Tech’s own demand, other than based on the highest bid. Tech should not run any secondary auctions and should not use bids as a floor to be entered into a secondary auction for the same ad opportunity.

• Tech should provide a mechanism for publishers and demand sources to validate technical transparency and auction logic, which may include a third-party audit.

• Publishers have ultimate control over priorities, order and bidding logic, including but not limited to calling direct sold inventory separately from auctioned supply, setting a price floor, or for any other reason. Such inventory is explicitly out of scope of the intention of this program. Further, nothing herein shall be misconstrued to impact basic ad serving.

• Tech should not use last look or any other practice which uses bids submitted by any other party to calculate or optimize its own bids.

• When a reserve price is applied as part of the auction, it should apply identically to all demand sources.

• Reserve price mechanism should not be updated dynamically at request time (ex. soft floors).

Latency

• Publishers should set timeout periods that balance the user experience against an acceptable level of latency for the bid response time of bidders. Tech’s own demand should adhere to publishers’ timeout periods and should not be processed differently.

• Tech should reject any bids received after the timeout has been reached and make aggregated latency statistics available.

• Tech should send bids to the ad server as soon as all demand sources have responded or the timeout has been reached.