Why am I getting no/wrong winners?

There are many variables that determine whether a specific campaign takes place in an auction and that influence the final winners.

If the winners are not what you expected, there can be several causes.

Pacing algorithm

Campaigns have a budget set when they are created. This budget applies to a specific period of time: Daily, weekly or monthly.

Topsort uses a pacing algorithm to make sure the budget is spent evenly over this period of time.

This prevents long-term budgets from being consumed in short periods of time.

Consider if this is what is resulting in your auctions having no or unexpected winners.

Checklist

If you don’t think the pacing algorithm is the cause, use the checklist below to debug issues further with campaigns.

Check expiration:

• Campaign is active.
• Campaign has an end date.
  • The end date has not passed yet.
• Campaign has a start date.
  • The start date has passed.

Check budget:

• Vendor of the campaign has budget in the balance.
• Campaign daily, weekly or monthly budget has not been reached.

Check targeting:

• Campaign bid triggers match the auction Product ID’s, Category ID’s or search query.

If the campaign budget has been reached and you’re seeing too few clicks. Check marketplace configuration:

• Is the reserve price of the marketplace too high?
• Is the target ROAS of the marketplace too high?

If this is a listing campaign. Check for product issues:

• The relevant product is shown in a non-sponsored slot on the relevant page.

Check for technical issues:

• Auction requests are made to Topsort on the relevant pages.
  • Number of auction requests is similar to number of organic page views.
• Auction requests are made with the right properties for the relevant page.
• Auction requests are not cached.
• No failed calls to the auctions endpoint in the logs.