5 Prebid Timeout Mistakes Publishers Make And How to Fix Them

The AdTech space is highly sensitive, even a millisecond can significantly impact your bottom line. This is especially true for Prebid timeout, where a tiny adjustment can either skyrocket your revenue or send it plummeting.

Optimizing Prebid timeout to find the sweet spot is complicated. It involves multiple constraints and considerations, and without proper optimization, things can go wrong.

In the worst-case scenario, these mistakes can cost you valuable opportunities and tank your revenue. So how do you fix it?

We've got you covered. Let's dive into the common Prebid timeout mistakes publishers make and learn how to fix them with reliable solutions.

Read on to learn more!

Understanding Prebid Timeout

Prebid is the leading header bidding solution. After an ad request is invoked, the header bidding setup on your website needs time to collect returning bids before calling the ad server. This delay is called Prebid timeout, the window within which all demand partners connected to your header bidding setup must return their bids. If they don't, they get timed out.

The Prebid timeout shouldn't be too high or too low. A higher timeout increases page loading times and hurts user experience, while a low Prebid timeout misses potential bids and increases the timeout rate.

Either situation causes revenue loss, affects UX, and decreases ad yield. That's why Prebid timeout adjustment and optimization are essential to manage this trade-off so that:

• You don't miss out on potential bids due to a short timeout value
• You maintain a positive user experience by avoiding excessively long timeouts
• You increase overall revenue by balancing missed opportunities from short timeouts against slower page loads from long timeouts

The best range to start optimizing your timeout settings is below 1000 milliseconds for internal auction timeout. 

Common Prebid Timeout Blunders that Publishers Make

While setting or finalizing Prebid timeout values, you might make mistakes by overlooking a few factors. These factors might seem trivial, but they can have a lasting effect on your revenue. Here, we've identified important factors and mistakes you might make when setting timeouts. Let's dig in.

Using one value for all

“No single value fits all scenarios”, this phrase applies to Prebid timeouts too. You may finalize a timeout value after considering metrics like bid performance, bidder responses, and user behavior, and then apply one timeout value across all devices (mobile and desktop), demographics, geographies, and page contexts.

The auction process differs across these categories, so setting a common value will yield suboptimal results that lead to poor user experience and lower overall revenue. This type of mistake is often overlooked by publishers when setting the Prebid timeout.

Too many bidders in the auction

More bidders can mean higher CPMs and better fill rates, but only to a point.
If you keep adding bidders without monitoring their performance, win rates, and impact on page speed, then, my friend, you are going off the rails.

Inactive bidders with low win rates cause higher page loading times, which will eventually affect the user experience and revenue. They also crowd out better-performing bidders, reducing your overall earnings.

Timeout trap

Faulty configuration of the Failsafe timeout can lead to substantial revenue loss in your Prebid setup. This is a second timeout set on top of the Prebid timeout.

The Failsafe timeout activates when Prebid encounters issues. If Prebid doesn't return bids within the specified timeout due to technical problems, the Failsafe timeout shuts down the auction and returns a null value to the ad server (usually GAM). This prevents Prebid from participating in the auction, a scenario called a timeout trap.

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Failsafe timeout is generally a protective measure for handling situations when Prebid fails to work. The problem arises when the Failsafe timeout is set equal to or lower than the Prebid timeout.

When even a single SSP times out, instead of concluding the auction with one fewer bidder, the Failsafe timeout triggers and sends no Prebid bids to the ad server. Prebid loses the chance to compete with other bids entirely.

Failing to do consistent optimization

Auction dynamics in the ad tech space evolve constantly. The Prebid timeout you set today, which is optimal now, may become suboptimal within a week or even a day. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Failing to optimize regularly will only increase the timeout rate and negatively impact user experience and ad revenue. 

Delay in fetching dynamic data

To optimize the auction process and get the best price for your inventory, you fetch and feed dynamic data like floor prices and targeting information from Prebid modules into auctions.

The computing and insertion of dynamic data begins only after the user invokes an ad request.

While dynamic data is essential for auction optimization, its fetching process can delay your Prebid timeout. This might create a domino effect, delaying the Prebid timeout causes you to miss out on potential bids, impacting user experience and ultimately reducing revenue.

How to Fix It? 

Now that we've covered the common Prebid timeout mistakes, let's look at the solutions.

Optimize timeout based on context and device

Different channels need different timeout values. Mobile devices, for instance, have slower network speeds and might need a long timeout, whereas desktops with faster networks will need shorter timeouts.

Content context matters too:

For instance, pages with higher traffic can hold shorter auction timeouts to maintain user engagement. While some other content can afford longer timeouts, though this could cost you revenue.
Therefore, doing A/B testing is essential to find the right spot in the bell curve of page load times and auction timeouts. Specifically, testing page-wise, traffic-wise, and across other variables will reap effective results and promising revenue hikes. 

Vet bidders timely

One of the best ways to reduce timeout rates is to regularly audit your bidders and replace underperformers with stronger partners.

Evaluate them based on participation frequency, response time, win rate, and bid rate to see which ones actually drive revenue. Remove bidder adapters that slow down your site or block other bidders from responding.

But what if a high-value bidder frequently times out? It is ideal to do bidder-level optimization to find the root cause. The reasons can be weak infrastructure, bad CMP configuration, poor auction setup, network quality, etc. 

Set higher Failsafe timeout values

Even optimized Prebid timeout values become useless if your Failsafe timeout is misconfigured. The solution is simple: set your Failsafe timeout higher than your Prebid timeout.

How much higher depends on your site's technical setup. To prevent the Failsafe from ever equaling or dropping below your Prebid timeout, use it as a variable in your formula.

For example: Failsafe_timeout = Prebid_timeout + 300

The best practice is to keep your Failsafe timeout settings below 3000 milliseconds.

Do consistent optimization

The auction dynamics are built around multiple parameters that change every minute. Therefore, you cannot follow the simple set–it and leave-it strategy for a timeout. Consistent optimization at frequent intervals are essential for optimum Prebid timeout.

You'll get better results using granular data: bid response times, page load times, user engagement metrics, bid rates, win rates, network performance, geography, device data, and historical performance for each bidder and auction.

Leverage Mile's Automation

Mile is an advanced AdTech platform designed to streamline Prebid optimization and maximize your revenue through automation. Our custom-built ad management solution streamlines Prebid optimization and maximizes your revenue through automation and AI-powered tools. 

Manual configuration of Prebid can be a complex and time-consuming process. Mile tackles this by automating several key aspects. Our automated bidder selection analyzes your setup and automatically selects the best-performing bidder partners, eliminating the need for manual research and testing.

Prebid timeouts define how long the ad exchange waits for bids before moving on. Mile can dynamically adjust these timeouts based on factors like user device, location, and content type. This ensures optimal performance for each impression by finding the sweet spot between maximizing bids and maintaining a good user experience (fast loading times).

And to ensure that you make the best revenue out of every session, we have advanced tools like dynamic flooring. It is an AI-powered technology that computes dynamic floor prices and inserts them into the auction. 

Using such automated tools to fetch dynamic data faster leaves you with a better range to optimize Prebid timeout. Eventually, you can combat the tradeoff between user experience and increased timeout rate to push your ad revenue to new heights. 

It’s Time to Timeout

Setting optimal Prebid timeout is a game of intricate complexities. You need to balance user experience and revenue opportunities at the same time.

Once you find reliable Prebid timeout by considering all differences and granularity, you can elevate your Prebid revenue to new heights by not overwhelming users with higher page loading times.

But how will you get there? Innovation and technology are at your rescue to break the constraints and beat the odds. And Mile can be your best destination to get all this.