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RTB gates are a specialized set of quality checks built for programmatic advertising pipelines. Unlike general gates that evaluate a single output, every RTB gate receives both the original OpenRTB request (ctx.input) and the bidder’s response (ctx.output). This lets gates cross-reference fields like impression IDs, floor prices, and blocked categories across the bid exchange boundary. These gates are aimed at DSPs building bidding agents, SSPs validating responses before auction, and ad exchanges enforcing protocol compliance at scale. All six gates run in-process inside your Node.js application — no network hop, no added latency beyond the gate logic itself.

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Available RTB gates

GateImportWhat it checks
tmaxGuardgates.rtb.tmaxGuard()Skips downstream gates when the OpenRTB tmax deadline is exhausted
impidMatchgates.rtb.impidMatch()Every bid.impid in the response matches a imp.id in the request
adomainVerifygates.rtb.adomainVerify()Bids do not contain placeholder or malformed advertiser domains
bidSanitygates.rtb.bidSanity()Bid prices are not unrealistically far above the impression floor
audienceSafetygates.rtb.audienceSafety()Child-directed inventory does not serve unsafe creative categories
bcatCompliancegates.rtb.bcatCompliance()Creative categories do not appear in the request’s bcat blocked list

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Full RTB engine setup

Pass the full OpenRTB request as input and the bid response as output. Set tmaxMs and startedAt on the context so tmaxGuard can calculate remaining deadline budget. 
import { createEngine, gates } from "@pecta/core";

const engine = createEngine({
  gates: [
    gates.rtb.tmaxGuard({ bufferMs: 15 }),
    gates.rtb.impidMatch(),
    gates.rtb.adomainVerify(),
    gates.rtb.bidSanity({ maxFloorMultiple: 50 }),
    gates.rtb.audienceSafety(),
    gates.rtb.bcatCompliance(),
  ],
  timeout: 15,
});

const result = await engine.evaluate({
  agent_id: "dsp-bidder-prod",
  input: openRtbRequest,
  output: openRtbResponse,
  tmaxMs: openRtbRequest.tmax,
  startedAt: requestStartMs,
});

if (!result.passed) {
  console.error("blocked:", result.gates.filter((g) => !g.passed));
}

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Request and response context

RTB gates differ from general gates in one key way: they need both sides of the bid exchange.
  • ctx.input — the raw OpenRTB 2.5/2.6 bid request object
  • ctx.output — the raw OpenRTB bid response object
  • ctx.tmaxMs — the tmax value from the request (milliseconds)
  • ctx.startedAt — wall-clock timestamp (ms) when the request arrived
Gates that only need one side (such as bcatCompliance, which reads bcat from the request) will skip gracefully when the relevant field is absent rather than failing hard.

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Gate ordering

Always place tmaxGuard first in your gate list. When the tmax deadline budget is exhausted, tmaxGuard returns skipped: true and the engine’s failFast behavior short-circuits all remaining gates. This prevents wasted evaluation time on a bid that is already too late to use.
A skipped result is treated as a pass — it does not count against the agent’s reputation score and does not block the bid. The remaining gates in the list are not run once a skip is triggered via the engine’s fail-fast path.