Roadblock

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

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:

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

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

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

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.

definePlacement: Define ad placements that can be part of roadblocks

Bid Config Extension: Dynamic roadblock configuration using embedded macros