User.gender

The user's gender as one uppercase letter: M for male, F for female, O for known to be other, and omitted when unknown. Present since OpenRTB 2.0 and deprecated in 2.6 (2.6-202204).

Deprecated since 2.6-202204stringOptionalSince 2.0

Field facts

Path: user.gender
Object: User
Type: string
Requirement: Optional
Added: OpenRTB 2.0
Deprecated: OpenRTB 2.6-202204
Spec section: 3.2.20

How it is used

OpenRTB 2.6 deprecated it together with yob and named no replacement field. Where demographic targeting is permitted, it now arrives as data provider segments in user.data.

Example

Where the field sits in a payload, with everything else left out:

{
  "id": "req-1",
  "user": {
    "gender": "F"
  }
}

Common mistakes

Sending words such as "male" or lowercase letters. The definition allowed only M, F, and O.
Still populating it on 2.6 traffic. The validator reports it as deprecated.

Version history

Added in OpenRTB 2.0, deprecated in 2.6-202204, and present in the latest snapshot. The table shows how each version's spec text types the field.

Versions	Type in the spec	Required	Deprecated
2.0 to 2.2	string	No	No
2.3 to 2.3.1	string	No	No
2.4	string	No	No
2.5	string	No	No
2.6-202210 to 2.6-202606	string	No	Yes

Versioned rules that name this field

openrtb.2.6.deprecated_fields OpenRTB 2.6 deprecated legacy sequence, device-ID hash, demographic, and single-api fields.

Related fields

Other User fields

For a walkthrough of the whole object, read User identity and EIDs.