Post-bid Overview

Pinokio Post-bid analyzes impressions after they render. It uses small detection tags — a JavaScript snippet or a tracking pixel — that fire alongside the ad and report back to Pinokio. From that data we build a detailed picture of who actually saw the impression, what device they were on, and whether they were a real human or some kind of invalid traffic.

Unlike Pre-bid, Post-bid does not run in the bid path. It is an after-the-fact analysis, which means you cannot use it to skip a bid in real time. What it can do — and what makes it valuable — is detect sophisticated forms of invalid traffic that look fine in the bid request but reveal themselves once the ad actually renders.

How it works

Every impression you want to verify gets a Pinokio detection tag served alongside it. The tag collects signals from the rendering environment — device characteristics, network information, behavioral patterns — and sends them to Pinokio. We sort impressions into IVT categories (general, sophisticated, or none) and surface the results in the Dashboard and through reports.

You can view Post-bid results in the Dashboard and pull them via Reporting.

What you need to get started

Your Pinokio account manager will generate detection tags tailored to your environments. You then deploy them alongside your ad impressions — for web that usually means rendering the tag in the same HTML iframe as the ad, for in-app video and CTV it means including the tag in the VAST.

We also recommend enabling Impression Sync, which lets us detect when a fraudster prevents the tag from loading.

Do not modify your detection tags after you receive them. If you need some change reach out to your Pinokio account manager.