Bidcliq Academy · B3: Bidder adapters and bidder params

Every SSP speaks its own dialect. PubMatic wants a publisherId and an adSlot; Rubicon wants accountId, siteId, and zoneId. A bid adapter is the translator that turns your generic ad unit into each SSP’s exact request, and back.

You configure each bidder with params, the placement, zone, or site IDs that SSP assigned you. They come from that SSP’s own documentation and account, never from a guess.

bids: [
  { bidder: 'rubicon',  params: { accountId: '7780', siteId: '87184', zoneId: '413290' } },
  { bidder: 'appnexus', params: { placementId: '13144370' } },
]

Different SSPs, different required params

Watch out

You cannot copy one bidder’s params into another. Each SSP’s IDs mean nothing to the others, so a copied param block produces no bids or, worse, requests the wrong inventory.

Aliases

An alias runs the same adapter twice under different names, for example two Rubicon seats with different params. Useful when one SSP represents you through more than one account.

Quick check

You copy Rubicon’s params block into the PubMatic bidder. Why does PubMatic return nothing?

Key idea

Every bidder you wire here should map to an authorized line in the page’s ads.txt. A bidder live in the wrapper but absent from ads.txt is a real leak, exactly what the Inspect tool flags on a live page.