Optimize Load and Render Rates

If you’re experiencing load or render rate issues for your trafficked creatives, we’re here to help.

In this article, we describe the steps you should take to optimize load and render rates:

1. Create a custom error report to check for creative or trafficking errors.

2. Create a render and load rate report to see render and load rates by impressions.

3. Create an allowlist or blocklist so you can gear toward the external inventory sources that have proven to be better performing.

Before running your campaign, external inventory macros should have been added to your tags.

Learn more about the three types of impressions tracked in Celtra (requested, loaded, and rendered).

We recommend monitoring the campaign by running this report 1-2 days after the campaign has gone live to see if there are any issues to address.

Creating a custom error report will help you identify creative and trafficking errors that have been triggered, if there are any, and optimize toward better inventory.

For example, an exchange may claim to be serving 5000 impressions, but 4000 of them have errors. This means you could be paying for 5000 impressions when only 1000 of those impressions are good. These errors may also be dragging down your render/load rates.

To create a custom error report, do the following:

1. From the Report Builder, create a new report.

2. Select Error Report.

3. Make sure the following dimensions are included:

   • externalSupplierName (exchange)

   • externalBundleId (App)

4. Generate and download the report.

Now that you’ve downloaded your report with the raw data, the next step is to create a pivot table so you can:

• Narrow down which error has the most count.

• Check if it is a specific Exchange or App that is the source of the error.

1. In your spreadsheet program or BI tool, you can pivot by error name, which are listed under Error.

When looking at the error column, you can identify what a specific error is by referring to the Error Descriptions reference article or clicking the edit icon to see the list of available metrics in the Report Builder. All the errors listed will start with “Impressions with Error…”. For example: Impressions with error, “MRAID object doesn't exist”.

2. Look at the the Errors column to see the number of times that error has occurred, then use sort to see if there are any outstanding patterns. You can also look at Type of error to see if the error type was related to trafficking (tag issue or issue related to tag at serve time) or your creative.

3. You can further break down these metrics by:

• Creative

• Placement

• External supplier name

• External bundle ID

If you see a large number of errors with the same “External Supplier Name”, there may be a problem with a specific ad exchange. If you see a large number of errors with the same “External Bundle ID”, there may be a problem with a specific app.

When reviewing your report, ask yourself the following:

• Is this an irregularity? Did it all of a sudden drop or increase? Can we see this change occur on a specific date? If so, what happened on that date (e.g. edit the creative tag or inventory source)?

• Is there a particular error (IE: 'mraid object doesn't exist.') that is causing these low rates?

• Could it be an issue with Celtra or the DSP/ad server?

We recommend monitoring the campaign by running this report 1-2 days after the campaign has gone live to see if there are any issues to address.

Creating a render and load Rate report will help you identify delivery performance and optimize by supplier and app.

To create a render and load rate report, do the following:

1. Build a new custom report, then add the below metrics and dimensions. You can drill down this information further, but we recommend starting here.

   Dimensions	Metrics
   External supplier ID (exchange) External bundle ID (app) Date (make sure all reports have the same timezone) Creative ID Platform	Requested impressions Loaded impressions Rendered impressions

2. Generate and Download the report.

Once you’ve created your render and load rate report, the next step is to create a pivot table so you can organize the data to show which exchanges/apps are providing you with the best return on investment (providing high performing load and render rates), and which ones are dragging your rates down.

Create Your Loaded and Rendered Rate Report

To organize your data by loaded and rendered rate, do the following:

1. In your spreadsheet program or BI tool, set “External supplier ID” as a row.

2. Set “Requested impressions”, “Loaded impressions”, and “Rendered impressions” as values.

3. Create 2 calculated fields containing the following:

• The formula for finding your loaded rate: =Loaded impressions/Requested impressions

• The formula for finding your rendered rate: =Rendered impressions/Loaded impressions

  

You may find it helpful to format your values as percentages.

Analyze Your Loaded and Rendered Rate Report

Once you’ve created your pivot table, you can analyze your data by switching and combining row fields and drilling down through different categories. Specifically, you may find it useful to sort by date, exchange, app or platform:

• See if there is a specific date or period in time an ad exchange or app shows a drop in load or render rate.

• See if there’s a problem with a specific exchange showing low render or load rates.

• See if a specific app is showing poor render or load rates. If so, you may want to consider blocklisting it.

• See if a specific platform is experiencing poor render or load rates.

In general, we recommend a minimum benchmark of 75% for load rate and 70% for rendered rate. If any of your rates fall below that, consider troubleshooting to identify possible issues.

Load and Render Rate Troubleshooting Checklist

When reviewing your report, ask yourself the following:

• Is this an irregularity? Did it all of a sudden drop or increase? Can we see this change occur on a specific date? If so, what happened on that date?

• Is the low load rate or render rate associated to any specific exchange or bundle ID?

• Is the low load rate or render rate associated to any specific platform (Android/iOS)?

• If the render rate is high and load rate is low, does this mean we’re wasting bids (requested impressions) on inventory that is not loading the ad quickly enough?

• Is the creative file size weight too heavy? We want to make sure the creative can load before the user scrolls past the ad-unit.

• Is the publisher avoiding pre-caching, causing the ad to load too slowly?

• If the load rate is high and render rate is low, is the publisher pre-caching the ad and the user never reaching the ad-unit?

• What inventory source (exchange/bundle ID) is being delivered to the most? For example, if we see 80% of the requested impressions delivered to AdX, we can look at AdX and check the bundle ID to see if there is a specific App that is serving most of the impressions.

• Could the exchange or app be weighing down the load or render rates? e.g. Does a given inventory source have a disproportionately high volume of requested impressions but a low load rate and rendered rate

We recommend using a combined approach of both allowlisting and blocklisting through your exchange across campaigns to ensure that poorer performing inventory sources are consistently removed, and higher performers are targeted for delivery.

Allowlist

Allowlists are predefined lists of external inventory sources that have proven performance, which are specifically targeted for delivery.

We recommend allowlisting sources with load rates that are higher than the campaign’s desired threshold.

Blocklist

Blocklists are predefined lists of external inventory sources that are proven to have poor performance, which are specifically banned from delivery. If you’ve identified a specific bundle ID or app with low render or load rates, blocklisting can help you increase your rates.

For example, if you see the ‘sessionsWithErrorMissingMraidObject’ error, an app is not displaying the ad. To fix this, you could blocklist the offending bundle ID/app.

At the time of request in-app, we attempt to initialize the MRAID object — according to the MRAID spec, the object should always exist within the global scope of the environment, and should at least return at state equal to "loading" — we fire this error when the object returns 'undefined'.

We recommend blocklisting the following to help increase your rates:

• Sources with load rates lower than the campaign’s desired threshold

• Any site returning an error that impacts load rate (as noted above)

Once you’ve created reports to understand your render/load rates, you may need to reach out to DSP or Celtra for further assistance.

DSP

Your DSP can help you with the following:

• Make sure the inventory that you are getting is free of errors. Occasionally, publishers may declare an incorrect ad size. These errors can be reported to your DSP to help them improve their inventory quality.

  For example, a publisher may list that they accept 300x600 creatives, but they’re actually serving it out of a 300x250. This would show up in the error report as sessionsWithErrorUnitVariantsDoNotFitPlacement.

• DSPs are accountable for listing MRAID compliant inventory, so if you encounter non-compliant inventory, double check with your DSP on how you can avoid non-compliant inventory through optimizations. If your report shows the ‘sessionsWithErrorMissingMraidObject’ error, you can organize this information by external site name, site id, or bundle to inform your optimizations with the DSP.

• Work together with your DSP to create a blocklist formulated from Load/Render Rate and Error Rate reporting. Alternatively, consider creating a white-list of historically high performing inventory.

Celtra

Celtra can help you with the following:

• If you experience any issues with the Celtra tag - for example, if the creative is not displaying on a live test page environment as expected, contact us.

• If report numbers align with multiple vendors but do not align with Celtra.

• If you need clarification or troubleshooting assistance that may require custom coding.

• If you want additional help troubleshooting or reviewing reports, please send a detailed email with all troubleshooting steps taken to support. Include the following information in your email:

  • Campaign Name and ID

  • Creative Name and ID

  • Placement Name and ID.

  • An attachment of all reports that you have generated (Celtra, 3P reports, etc) broken out daily and in the same timezone with metrics you would like assistance with.