Rule reference

Seat is not allowed to bid on this request

openrtb.seatbid.seat_not_allowederrorRequest/response pair

The seat is absent from the request's wseat allowlist, or present in its bseat blocklist.

What it means

The seatbid's seat is not permitted by the request: absent from its wseat allowlist, or present in its bseat blocklist. Seat restrictions are how publishers and deals scope which buyer accounts may participate.

Why it matters

A bid from a disallowed seat is discarded no matter its price, so the compute behind it was pure waste. Recurring violations look like a bidder ignoring deal terms, which sours the direct relationships seats exist to serve.

How to fix it

Filter eligible seats against wseat/bseat before bidding, and propagate the restriction into your campaign selection so restricted requests only reach campaigns from permitted seats.

Example that trips it

// request
{ "wseat": ["dsp-1", "dsp-2"] }

// response
{ "seatbid": [{ "seat": "dsp-9", "bid": [ ... ] }] }

wseat is an allowlist. A seat outside it is not permitted to bid on this impression, whatever the price.

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.