From CRITEO recommendation team

Request:

We propose increasing the limit on the number of ad components entering the bid from 20 to 40.

Background:

The current limitation on the number of ad components is causing several challenges in our advertising platform. As per the FLEDGE specification (https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/blob/main/FLEDGE.md#34-ads-composed-of-multiple-pieces), we are restricted to a maximum of 20 ad components entering the generate_bid function. This constraint has a significant impact on our advertising operations.

Rationale:

Limitation on Product Display:

The existing constraint severely restricts the number of products that can be displayed in our advertising banners. This limitation has the following consequences:

Impact on Performance: limiting the number of products in our banners to fewer than 20 results in significant missed displays and click opportunities.

Impact on Product Offering: We are constrained to offer only simple banners and cannot create carousels, paginations, animations, and other creative formats. These creative offerings account for a significant share of our HTML displays. Restricting these options limits our ability to engage users effectively.

Limitation on K Anonymity Checks:

We aim to ensure K anonymity for around 20 products minimum in our displays to maintain performance standards. However, the current constraint severely limits our ability to explore and evaluate K anonymity for a broader range of products.

Impact on Exploration: As we want to use around 20 product minimum for displays to keep performance, we have very little room for exploration for K anonymity. In a creative perspective, we want all the 20 components that are entering the generate_bid() function to be displayed. So, we will choose only products that have high chance to be K anonymous. By limiting the number of ad components to 20, we will have to limit very hardly the exploration to provide enough products to have a normal creative offering.

Proposed Solution:

To address the challenges mentioned above and to maintain a balance between creative offerings, performance, and exploration, we propose increasing the limit on the number of ad components from 20 to 40.