Auction dynamics

The MAX In-App Bidding Exchange is a first-price, fair and transparent, unified first-price auction in which the highest bidder wins. All SDK in-app bidders and DSPs have equal access to each ad impression opportunity. They receive full notification coverage with enhanced macros.

The MAX In-App Bidding Exchange collects bids for individual impression opportunities from SDK-based demand partners and DSPs. It does this via the OpenRTB 2.5 protocol. To integrate with MAX, a bidder must comply with the OpenRTB 2.5 API.

To read the MAX in-app bidding spec for SDK-based in-app bidders, see the AppLovin oRTB specification page

MAX ad serving flow

1. The user launches the app.
2. MAX initializes all eligible SDKs.
3. The publisher requests an ad.
4. For SDK bidders, MAX collects bid tokens from initialized SDKs.
5. MAX SDK makes an ad request to MAX ad server.
6. MAX auction server requests bids from eligible SDK bidder endpoints and DSPs in AppLovin Exchange. It passes identity tokens in the bid request to SDK bidders.
7. DSPs and SDK bidders return real-time bids in the maximum timeout threshold (tmax). MAX auction server merges these with the non-bidding demand sources in the publisher waterfall.
8. MAX auction server resolves the auction based on the highest CPM value.
9. MAX sends loss notifications to bidders that lose the auction due to error or invalid bid (e.g. below the floor, missing bid value, zero as bid price).
10. If the winner is a DSP, MAX notifies the DSP and the AppLovin SDK loads and shows the ad. If the winner is an SDK bidder, MAX notifies the winning demand partner’s SDK so that it can load and show the ad.
11. If the load succeeds, MAX sends a win notification to the bidder. If the load does not succeed, MAX sends a loss notification to the bidder.
12. After the ad renders, MAX calls the winner’s billing URL.