Neutral Assessment Framework
DSP Evaluation Checklist
12 essential questions to evaluate any DSP before committing media budget. Designed to be fair to competitors and transparent on standards.
Transparency & Pricing
Do you disclose your exact take rate and tech fee separate from media spend?
Many platforms blend tech fees, data fees, and media markup into a single gross CPM, masking 15–30% margins.
Yes. Invoices should clearly break down net media cost, tech fee percentage, and third-party data or verification costs line-by-line.
Do you charge an additional fee on 'savings' generated by bid shading?
Some DSPs take 10–20% of the difference between your max bid and the shaded clearing price, creating conflicting incentives.
No. Bid shading should be a standard algorithm feature included in your platform fee, not a separate profit center.
Can I access unaggregated log-level auction data (bid price, win price, domain/app ID, timestamp)?
Without raw bid and win logs, you cannot independently verify auction fairness, attribution windows, or domain delivery.
Yes. Raw log files or S3/GCS bucket exports should be accessible for auditing.
Bidding Engine & Controls
Can I define hard human rules that override or bound machine learning bidding?
Pure 'black-box' algorithms can make erratic bid spikes during anomaly events or early cold-start learning periods.
Yes. The platform should offer a deterministic Rule Engine allowing you to set hard bid caps, floor limits, and pausing logic.
How does the bidding engine behave before it has 50–100 conversions on a new campaign?
DSPs often burn budget rapidly in 'exploration mode' without transparent safety constraints.
It should start with bounded, conservative exploration, using Bayesian priors or rule-based guards until statistical significance is achieved.
How does your optimization engine account for delayed postback conversions (e.g. Day 3–7 purchases)?
If an engine assumes all conversions arrive instantly, it prematurely down-bids high-converting cohorts with longer evaluation cycles.
It models conversion arrival curves and applies back-propagation or statistical discount factors rather than naive immediate attribution.
Attribution & Integrations
Do you integrate natively with major MMPs (AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular, Kochava) for real-time postbacks?
Manual CSV uploads or custom webhooks introduce latency that cripples intra-day algorithmic optimization.
Yes. Standard server-to-server postback endpoints should ingest raw installs and in-app event streams with sub-second latency.
Can I configure separate attribution windows and bid targets for Click-Through (CTA) vs View-Through (VTA)?
Treating view-through impressions identically to high-intent clicks often leads to buying cheap, intrusive inventory that claims accidental credit.
Yes. You should be able to weigh or separate CTA vs VTA events in both reporting and bidding weightings.
Supply Quality & Anti-Fraud
How do you enforce ads.txt, app-ads.txt, and sellers.json compliance?
Unauthorized resellers and domain spoofers divert advertiser budgets to fraudulent or low-value publisher clones.
The DSP should automatically crawl and validate ads.txt/app-ads.txt trees and reject bids from unlisted or DIRECT/RESELLER mismatches.
Do you filter invalid traffic (IVT) pre-bid, or do you only report it post-bid after the money is spent?
Post-bid clawbacks rarely cover 100% of wasted budget. Real-time pre-bid blocking protects ad spend before an impression is served.
Pre-bid IP, bot, and datacenter filtering should evaluate incoming bid requests within the 100ms RTB timeout window.
Governance & Workflows
Does the platform support multi-client organizational hierarchies with isolated permissions and billing?
Agencies and enterprise teams need strict brand data segregation and role-based permissions to prevent cross-account errors.
Yes. Hierarchical account structures should support Master Agency, Client, and Campaign levels with distinct access controls.
Are all UI configuration features available through a REST or GraphQL API?
Without API coverage, teams cannot automate budget pacing, reporting syncs, or custom rules at scale.
Yes. A modern DSP should be built API-first, allowing programmatic creation of campaigns, creatives, and budget caps.
How to Interpret Your Total Score
High transparency, clear fee disclosure, and robust control mechanisms. Suitable for scaled performance media and multi-client agencies.
Competent bidding engine but potentially opaque fees or limited log-level visibility. Negotiate specific contractual addendums.
Significant risk of hidden margins, arbitrage markups, or uncontrolled algorithmic budget drift. Proceed with caution.