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User-agent Debugging

This article describes how to provoke bidding for a specific campaign

M
Written by Marcus Johansson
Updated over a week ago

It is possible to trigger BidTheatre DSP to bid for a specific campaign of your choosing. This is handy if you would like to confirm how an ad will appear in the context of a specific publisher, or perhaps screenshot a site showing an ad.

The way to accomplish this is by extending your browser's user-agent string with "ASXACTxxx" where xxx is replaced with the id of your campaign. Below is an example user-agent string that will force BidTheatre DSP to place bids for the campaign with id 1000.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36 ASXACT1000

You may also opt for a specific ad dimension by appending :widthxheight, for example:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36 ASXACT1000:980x240

Do not replace your entire User-Agent string with ASXACTxxx, append it to the end of it instead. Some sites and/or SSP´s refuse to send bid requests if the User-Agent string looks incorrect.

Please note that:

  • The user agent manipulation is not a guarantee to have your ad displayed. Bids are still placed in competition with other demand sources, and the seller applies filtering logic on its end to decide on the winning bid.

  • All other targeting set on the campaign will still be enforced, so make sure you comply with the targeting such as retargeting etcetera.

  • You will not be able to choose specific ad dimensions / creatives

How to alter your user agent

Alter your user-agent string by installing a browser plugin. For Google Chrome, there is "User-Agent Switcher for Chrome".

Example using User-Agent Switcher for Chrome

  • New User-agent name: Name of campaign

  • New User-agent String: Your User agent + ASXACTxxxx (xxxx=campaign ID) E.g.Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.143 Safari/537.36 ASXACT2837

  • Group: Name of Browser or other grouping of your choice

  • Indicator Flag; ASX

  • Save by clicking Add

  • To activate your User agent click the User-agent Switcher icon, select Group and then your User agent.

  • Open a site that has your ad.

  • You should now be able to find your ad. If it doesn't show or you want a different ad from the same campaign, refresh the site.


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