Inventory - FAQ

Inventory audits

How is audit information conveyed in the bid request?

The results of inventory audits are available in the Bid Request as an inventory_audit object. This includes the auditor_member_id, intended_audience, inventory_attributes, and content_categories. Xandr audits will be in the bid_info portion of the bid request and the auditor_member_id will be null. If Xandr has not audited the inventory, there will be no inventory_audit object in the bid_info portion of the bid request.

Seller audits will be in the "tags" level of the bid request, with an inventory audit per tag, as applicable. The auditor_member_ id will be the seller's member ID for seller audits. Most bid requests are for a single tag on a page, however some auctions are multi-tag auctions. Since sellers audits appear on the tag level, each tag in a multi-tag auction that has been audited by the seller will have an inventory_audit object. If the seller has not audited the inventory, there will be no inventory_audit object in the tag level.

Because the Xandr audits and seller audits are conducted independently, it is possible that the results of the two audits may be different. Buyers of inventory may decide which sellers they trust - and thus may disregard any audit data from sellers that they do not trust. Buyers may also decide how to reconcile any conflicts of audit data using their relative trust between Xandr and seller audits.

What data is available from an inventory audit?

An inventory audit will include the data below about the impression:

Intended audience is an enum of general, children, young_adult, or mature, and indicates the target maturity level of readers of the site.

The field inventory_attributes contains an array of the IDs of sensitive attributes of the site that some advertisers may opt not to run on. These IDs can be found in the Inventory Attribute Service to determine what they mean. The presence of an empty array in this field indicates that the site has been audited and found to have no sensitive attributes.

The field content_categories contains an array of the IDs of content categories of the site. These IDs can be found in the Content Category Service to determine what they mean.

Who audits inventory?

Xandr audits inventory by domain. Our auditors review the highest traffic domains first, and have currently audited domains accounting for over 75% of the traffic through the platform. Sellers of inventory may also audit their inventory. When a seller audits their inventory, they input the same type of data, using the same taxonomy that an Xandr auditor uses for the inventory audit. A given impression may have no audit information, only Xandr's audit, only the seller's audit, or both Xandr and the seller's audit.

Platform sellers

How can I find the ID of a certain seller?

This information is available through the API using the Platform Member Service.