Prebid troubleshooting: step-by-step guide

To assist publishers in troubleshooting their Prebid integration, we have created this step-by-step guide, to help them review their integration.

Step 1: Enable Prebid Debug Mode

Make sure to use a new private navigation window.
Enable Prebid debugging mode:

• Option 1: Append pbjs_debug=true to the URL.
• Option 2: Use Prebid debug extension, Professor Prebid - Ensure the extension is enabled in private navigation mode.

Step 2: CMP implementation

If your website operates in a country subject to Data Protection laws, you must have a Consent Management Platform (CMP) on your website properties to collect user consent choices and make them available for any adapters.

On the website’s page when the CMP pops up, you can load the Prebid library but you mustn’t load any adapters or modules or send bid requests to bidders before obtaining the user’s consent.

Step 3: Required modules

To distribute ID5 ID, ensure to include both the Consent Management module (if applicable) and the id5IdSystem submodule, in addition to the other modules you normally include in your prebid library.

To check your modules:

• Option 1: Type in your browser Console tab pbjs.installedModules
• Option 2: Open Professor Prebid, and go to the Config tab.

Step 4: ID5 settings inside the Prebid config

All the instructions to set the id5idSystem module into your Prebid Config can be found on ID5 Prebid User ID Module page.

To check Prebid settings:

• Option 1: Type in your browser Console tab pbjs.getConfig()
• Option 2: Open Professor Prebid, go to the UserID tab, and then click on Config

Step 5 - Call the Prebid elements in the right order

To ensure everything is properly implemented and to send an id5 id on every bid request you send to bidders, you must respect a certain order when you initialize elements within your Prebid wrapper.

To inspect the order,in a new private navigation window with the browser console open, you should append &pbjs_debug=true at the end of the URL, to enable Prebid debug messages in the console.

Please find below the correct order

1. CMP appears - wait for the user’s consent
2. Initialization of the consentManagement module which fetches user’s consent
3. Initialization of the id5idSystem module - user consent is passed by the Consent Management module
4. Sending bid requests to bidders with ID5 ID

Step 6: Inspect the ID5 request call

In the Network tab of your browser, search for 'id5-sync' and inspect the request that is named v3 (on older versions of prebid the request will be named with your ID5 Partner ID).
To check if an ID5 ID was return, you should inspect the reesponse of the request by going to the Preview tabe and check out the universal_uid paramer.
You can also inspect one of your bidder requests to see if the encrypted ID5 id is correctly passed.