Overview
Auctions resolve bids from different campaigns. These auctions will then result in winning listings, banners or brands that can be shown in your marketplace.
As a marketplace owner you need to decide on where/how you want to resolve these auctions. Typical cases include:
- Sponsored listings inline in search results.
- Banners in sidebars or carousels on specific pages.
As a a marketplace owner you have full control over the way auctions are created.
Auction flow
While some of the details differ slightly depending on the type of auction you’re running (listing, banners or brands) the general flow is the same.
1. Create auction
Auctions are created by calling the appropriate API endpoint.
The most important properties are:
- The type of the auction: Listings, banners or brands.
- The maximum number of winners: Determines the maximum number of bids that can win this auction.
In addition there are properties that determine which bids can be triggered by the auction:
- Product ID’s: Will trigger bids that target those specific products.
- Category IDs’: Will trigger bids that target those categories.
- Search query: Will trigger bids that target matching keywords.
2. Topsort resolves the auction
Topsort will look at active campaigns that match the given auction type.
Bids from these campaigns are then considered for the auction if:
- They can be triggered by the auction according to the properties in the previous section.
- They are higher than the reserve prices for the marketplace.
Reserve prices are minimum bid prices configurable by the marketplace owner.
Remaining bids will then be resolved and result in a number of winning bids (up to the maximum number of winners).
3. Display winners
The winners will be returned by Topsort and are ready to be displayed to the end-user.
4. Track events
After an auction is resolved and the winners are displayed, it’s important to keep track of events related to the auction.
See the events section for more details.