Ezoic Header Bidding Issue Affecting Bangladesh Traffic – Timeline, Impact, and What BD Publishers Should Know

Over the past few weeks, I noticed sharp and unexpected revenue drops across my websites that receive a large percentage of traffic from Bangladesh. After contacting Ezoic Support, it became clear that the cause wasn’t seasonal fluctuations or ad-demand volatility — it was a technical issue specifically related to header bidding for Bangladesh-based traffic.

Ezoic confirmed that header bidding was temporarily disabled twice within a short period due to an over-reporting problem affecting Bangladesh. Since a majority of my visitors come from this region, the impact was immediate and quite significant.

Below is a detailed breakdown of what happened, how it affected revenue, and why header bidding interruptions can cause such large swings for publishers targeting Bangladesh.

What Is Header Bidding and Why Does It Matter?

Header bidding is an advanced programmatic advertising technique where multiple ad exchanges, SSPs, and demand partners compete in real time for an ad impression before the ad loads. Instead of relying on a single network to decide the winning bid, header bidding opens the auction to many buyers simultaneously.

Why it matters:

• It increases competition for your impressions
• More competition usually means higher bid prices
• Higher bid prices lead to improved ePMV and total daily revenue
• It gives publishers more transparency and allows for better yield optimization

When header bidding is disabled, even temporarily, several things happen:

• Major demand partners stop bidding
• Competition drops sharply
• The system falls back to less competitive networks
• ePMV and revenue drop dramatically — sometimes by 50% or more

This is exactly what occurred for Bangladesh-based traffic.

October 29–31: First Sharp Revenue Drop

During these three days, revenue fell by an estimated 50–60% across my Bangladesh-focused websites. After I reached out to Ezoic, their Revenue Operations team confirmed that header bidding for Bangladesh traffic had been turned off as a precautionary measure due to an over-reporting issue.

When the bidding stops, the highest-paying partners effectively disappear from the auction, causing ePMV to collapse — which is exactly what I saw.

November 1–10: Partial Recovery

On November 1, header bidding for most domains was restored. Revenue did improve, but only returned to about 75–80% of the previous baseline. The performance was noticeably better than the end of October, but still not fully back to the stable levels I normally see.

This partial recovery suggests that not all partners were reactivated immediately, or that some key partners were still evaluating the earlier over-reporting issue.

November 11–12: Second Major Decline

Around November 11–12, earnings dropped sharply again — roughly 50% down once more. When I contacted support again, Ezoic confirmed that header bidding for Bangladesh traffic had been disabled a second time starting November 10 for the same underlying reason.

Because a large portion of my traffic comes from Bangladesh, the impact was immediately visible across all metrics.

Why Bangladesh is Uniquely Sensitive to This Issue

For publishers whose traffic is distributed across many regions, a localized bidding interruption might barely be noticeable.

But for sites where Bangladesh represents 60%, 70%, or even 90% of audience traffic, the effect is magnified:

• A regional bidding interruption affects most impressions
• ePMV collapses in that region
• Overall daily revenue falls dramatically even if global demand is normal

This is exactly what happened in my case.

Is This an Ezoic Problem or a Partner-Side Issue?

Based on support responses, it appears the root cause comes from over-reporting detected by demand partners. When partners detect anomalies in traffic data, they may pause participation until the issue is investigated.

Ezoic is currently acting out of caution to maintain trust with demand partners and avoid larger disruptions. Their technical team is working to stabilize the issue so that partners can safely resume bidding for Bangladesh traffic.

What Should Publishers Expect?

Until the underlying issue is fully resolved:

• Revenue may fluctuate
• Bangladesh ePMV may remain below the earlier baseline
• Partial or temporary restoration is possible
• Another shutdown could happen if partners detect irregularities again

If your site heavily relies on Bangladesh-based visitors, this may continue to affect your bottom line in the short term.

Possible Reasons Behind the Bangladesh-Specific Issue

While Ezoic has not publicly detailed the exact cause behind the over-reporting incident, it is worth considering why a problem like this might surface specifically for Bangladesh traffic. Over-reporting typically indicates that the number of ad requests or impressions reported from a region does not match the activity that demand partners consider valid. When such discrepancies appear, partners may temporarily halt bidding for that region to prevent budget waste, fraud exposure, or system abuse.

In regions where digital advertising practices are not always standardized, over-reporting can sometimes be linked to malpractices or risky behaviors adopted by certain publishers attempting to increase revenue quickly. These can include:

• Generating invalid impressions through aggressive refresh scripts
• Using unapproved ad placements that inflate viewability
• Deploying unauthorized traffic-boosting methods
• Hosting low-quality or scraped content with artificially inflated pagination
• Encouraging users to reload pages or interact unnaturally with ads

Most publishers follow the rules — but even a subset engaging in such behavior can create large-scale distortions in the traffic quality for the entire region. When demand partners detect unusual behavior from a country, the entire country’s inventory can come under scrutiny.

For a market like Bangladesh, where many new publishers enter digital monetization rapidly and may not fully understand policy guidelines, the risk of widespread minor malpractices accumulating into a major reporting irregularity becomes more likely. Once the partners detect patterns they consider unreliable, they may respond with drastic measures — such as pausing header bidding — which affects all publishers, even the legitimate ones.

This is one of the unfortunate realities of programmatic advertising:

The mistakes of a few can create consequences for thousands.

That’s why maintaining clean traffic, proper ad implementation, and long-term best practices is essential — not only for individual earnings, but for the stability of the entire region’s ad demand.

Have You Observed Similar Drops? (Calling Bangladeshi Publishers)

If you are an Ezoic publisher with a large audience from Bangladesh, I’d love to hear your experience.

• Did your revenue drop around the same timelines?
• Did it recover fully or only partially?
• Did you notice another sharp decline after November 10?

Please share any insights in the comments section — it will help us understand how widespread this issue is and how publishers across Bangladesh are being affected.