What a seller ID is
Every account on an exchange or network has an ID. Publishers write it in field 2 of their app-ads.txt
lines, the network lists it as seller_id in its sellers.json, and it travels in OpenRTB bid
requests as the sid of a schain node. The same three places have to agree for a buyer to trust
an impression.
An ID only means something together with its ad system: 12345 on one exchange and
12345 on another are unrelated accounts. That is why the lookup asks for both.
What the lookup tells you
First, who owns the account: its seller_type and the business name and domain the network
publishes. When the account is a publisher's and the name looks like a private person's, we leave the name
out. If the network has dropped the ID, you see the date it disappeared; any app-ads.txt that still lists it
carries a stale line.
Then how widely it is declared: the apps in our index whose current app-ads.txt names the account, split by DIRECT and RESELLER, with the largest of them. Add an app and you get the verdict our paid API gives for that pair (authorised, unauthorised or unverifiable) with the reasons.
Patterns worth a second look
A reseller account declared DIRECT by dozens of apps usually means a mediation partner's instructions were
copied without reading them. A publisher account declared by apps of several unrelated developers deserves a
closer look, since a DIRECT seat should belong to one company. An ID the network never listed points to a
typo, often a missing prefix such as pub- on Google accounts, which we normalise the way buyers
do.