Rule reference

openrtb.response.seatbid_or_nbr.required

errorBid response

What it means

The bid response contains neither seatbid (at least one seat's bids) nor nbr (the no-bid reason code). A response must either bid or say why it is not bidding; this one does neither.

Why it matters

An empty-but-present response is ambiguous: the exchange cannot tell a deliberate pass from a bidder bug, so the traffic shows up in error dashboards instead of no-bid analytics. Persistent ambiguity gets a bidder's QPS deprioritized.

How to fix it

Return bids in seatbid, or an nbr code explaining the pass, or no body at all (HTTP 204, the cleanest no-bid). The nbr guide lists every documented reason code.

Example that trips it

{ "id": "req-1", "cur": "USD" }

Check your payload

Paste a bid request or response into the tester to see whether this code fires against it, or gate on the id in CI with the CLI: the id is stable, wording is not.

Back to the full diagnostic code reference.