Bidstream congestion refers to one of the issues in the digital ad supply chain, which implies that one impression opportunity is being offered to Demand-side companies multiple times, i.e. via multiple supply path options.
What Is Bidstream Congestion?
From a technical standpoint, the newly-coined term “bidstream congestion” is affected by a continued rapid increase of ads.txt entries, hence the similarly sharp growth of authorized supply paths, fueled by a natural publishers’ desire to maximize their revenue results in programmatic and direct deals. Unfortunately, such a galloping growth often results in auction duplication, when one ad impression opportunity may be actually presented over 10 times directly, along with over 10 rebroadcasts via programmatic chains.
Consequently, such auction duplication may lead to significant data discrepancies, not to mention highly-increased operational complexity and overall bidding costs, accordingly, when digital businesses on the Demand side inevitably need to filter through multiple redundant inventory entries.
Potential Solutions to Bidstream Congestion
Even though bidstream congestion isn’t widely considered the worst issue in the programmatic video advertising ecosystem, the importance of working out a practical way to optimize supply paths can hardly be underestimated.
However, in spite of the so-to-speak “ intermittent” industry initiatives to streamline the bidding process through the minimization of middlemen, the current realities are that online publishers frequently have no other choice than to submit their online inventory for auction wherever possible in order to at least ensure sustainable revenue streams.
In this respect, whereas IAB Tech Lab has been known to be at the forefront with their proposals on how to approach supply path optimization in a more efficient manner, the truth is, as of December 2024, the probability of the release, let alone adoption of a working market-wide solution is rather low, to say the least, at least in a short-term perspective.