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Audienzz Documentation

Roadblock

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

Roadblock is a feature that allows for coordinated ad delivery across multiple placements. It ensures that related ads from the same campaign can be displayed together across different positions on a page.

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”

When a roadblock is configured, Htag treats a group of placements as a single unit for bidding purposes. If a bid with roadblock configuration wins the auction, it will:

  1. Display the winning ad in the primary placement
  2. Block competing ads in companion placements from render
  3. Potentially display companion creatives in those blocked placements

Profitability Calculation

Section titled “Profitability Calculation”

Htag makes intelligent decisions about when to activate roadblocks based on profitability. A roadblock bid will only win if its CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is higher than the sum of the CPMs of the individual placements it would block.

This ensures that roadblocks are only activated when they provide more revenue than the individual placements would generate separately. If multiple roadblock bids target overlapping placements, Htag resolves these conflicts by selecting the most profitable option.

Testing Roadblocks

Section titled “Testing Roadblocks”

When testing roadblock functionality, you can use the ast_override_div URL parameter to manually block specific placements. This can be useful for simulating roadblock behavior without having actual roadblock bids.

For more details, see the Debugging HTAG guide.

Dynamic Roadblock Configuration

Section titled “Dynamic Roadblock Configuration”

For advanced use cases, you can also configure roadblock behavior dynamically using bid config extensions. This allows advertisers to embed roadblock configuration directly in their ad content, enabling fine-grained control without modifying the base Htag setup.

See Bid Config Extension for detailed information on dynamic roadblock configuration.

Roadblock vs High Impact

Section titled “Roadblock vs High Impact”

Roadblock and High Impact are both mechanisms for coordinated ad delivery across multiple placements, but they differ in how they evaluate bids:

  • Roadblock: A single bid competes against the sum of CPMs from the companion placements it would block. The roadblock wins only if it is more profitable than serving individual ads in those placements. This is a profitability-based approach.
  • High Impact: Multiple bids across different placements compete within a named group. The bid with the highest CPM wins and blocks its declared companions. This is a winner-takes-all approach designed for mutually exclusive formats like skins, topscrolls, and midscrolls.

These two features are mutually exclusive on a bid — a single bid cannot have both roadblockType and highImpact configured.

See High Impact for detailed information on high-impact groups.

Section titled “Related Methods”
Section titled “Related Concepts”