Overview

Google Open Bidding (Google OB) is a vendor that supplies inventory to Equativ via Equativ’s openRTB endpoint, an integration also referred to as Server side bidding.  Publishers can integrate with Google OB to access the Equativ SSP’s demand. There are two modes by which publishers get paid for the inventory they provide:

• Indirect payments: Google OB acts as a payment intermediary where the SSP, such as Equativ, pays Google OB for the sent inventory and Google OB then pays the publisher.
• Direct payments: The SSP, such as Equativ, pays the publisher without involvement of Google OB. This mode, referred to as Google OB Direct pay, is described in this article.

Eligible publishers

The Google OB Direct pay feature is mainly directed at publishers using Google Ad Manger 360. Google Admob and Google SMB publishers are not yet eligible. 

Benefits

The benefits of Google OB Direct pay for publishers are as follows:

• Increased publisher revenues: Publishers retain their full earnings by avoiding Google OB's revenue share.
• Optimized Supply Path: Direct pay streamlines the supply chain: Google’s node is removed from the SupplyChain Object. In its sellers.json file, Equativ can directly declare the publisher’s domain with the PUBLISHER seller type, instead of declaring Google’s domain google.com with the INTERMEDIARY seller type. For more information, see Sellers.json and Supply Chain Object compliancy. 

Note that the Google OB Direct pay feature is SSP-specific. Google OB publishers can use the Google OB Direct pay feature with one SSP, such as Equativ, while using the indirect payment mode with another SSP.

Set up Google OB Direct pay

To set up Google OB Direct pay, follow these steps:

1. Contact your representatives at both Equativ and Google OB to communicate your intention to use Google OB Direct pay.
2. Refer to Google's documentation Set up Open Bidding Direct Pay (Beta) for detailed instructions. 
3. Update your ads.txt/app-ads.txt file to accurately reflect the implementation of Google OB Direct pay. Refer to Google’s guidelines for more information.
4. Determine a precise date and time for activating Google Direct pay in both Google OB and Equativ. Minimize the time difference between activations.
5. Activate Direct pay in both Google OB and Equativ platforms. If the activation date is not the first of the month, you will need to issue two invoices:
   1. One invoice to Google OB covering the period of indirect payment.
   2. A second invoice to Equativ for the period of direct payment. Equativ will provide an invoice request with all the necessary details to be included in the invoice.

Once Direct pay is active in Google OB, each bid request originating from a Direct pay publisher will include the directpay field (boolean) set to true:

• For web requests: site.publisher.ext.directpay
• For app requests: app.publisher.ext.directpay
• For dooh requests: dooh.publisher.ext.directpay

For more information about these fields, see Open RTB API integration: bid request specification (1).