diff --git a/lib/addons/botDetection.test.ts b/lib/addons/botDetection.test.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51bd784
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/addons/botDetection.test.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+import { isBot } from "./botDetection";
+
+describe("isBot", () => {
+  it.each([
+    "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)",
+    "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0)",
+    "some-crawler/1.0",
+    "spider",
+    "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) HeadlessChrome/120.0.0.0",
+    "PhantomJS/2.1.1",
+    "curl/8.4.0",
+    "python-requests/2.31.0",
+    "axios/1.6.0",
+    "PostmanRuntime/7.36.0",
+    "GoogleOther",
+  ])("returns true for bot user agent %j", (ua) => {
+    expect(isBot(ua)).toBe(true);
+  });
+
+  it.each([
+    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
+    "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15",
+    "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0",
+  ])("returns false for real browser user agent %j", (ua) => {
+    expect(isBot(ua)).toBe(false);
+  });
+
+  it("is case insensitive", () => {
+    expect(isBot("GOOGLEBOT")).toBe(true);
+    expect(isBot("CuRl/1.0")).toBe(true);
+  });
+
+  it("returns false for an empty user agent", () => {
+    expect(isBot("")).toBe(false);
+  });
+
+  it("falls back to navigator.userAgent when no argument is provided", () => {
+    const spy = jest.spyOn(navigator, "userAgent", "get").mockReturnValue("Googlebot/2.1");
+    expect(isBot()).toBe(true);
+    spy.mockRestore();
+  });
+});
diff --git a/lib/addons/botDetection.ts b/lib/addons/botDetection.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fcc86a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/addons/botDetection.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+const BOT_PATTERN = new RegExp(
+  [
+    "bot",
+    "crawler",
+    "spider",
+    "scraper",
+    "headless",
+    "phantomjs",
+    "selenium",
+    "webdriver",
+    "curl",
+    "wget",
+    "python",
+    "java",
+    "perl",
+    "ruby",
+    "go-http-client",
+    "okhttp",
+    "axios",
+    "fetch",
+    "postman",
+    "insomnia",
+    "googleother",
+    "google-extended",
+    "google-inspectiontool",
+  ].join("|"),
+  "i"
+);
+
+/** True if the current user agent looks like a known bot/crawler. */
+export function isBot(userAgent: string = navigator.userAgent): boolean {
+  return BOT_PATTERN.test(userAgent || "");
+}
diff --git a/lib/edge/targeting.test.js b/lib/edge/targeting.test.js
index 2c82961..8d6356b 100644
--- a/lib/edge/targeting.test.js
+++ b/lib/edge/targeting.test.js
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-import { PrebidORTB2, TargetingKeyValues, Targeting } from "./targeting";
+import { PrebidORTB2, TargetingKeyValues, Targeting, SkipTargetingForBots } from "./targeting";
 
 describe("PrebidORTB2", () => {
   test("returns empty array on empty input", () => {
@@ -45,6 +45,31 @@ describe("TargetingKeyValues", () => {
   });
 });
 
+describe("SkipTargetingForBots", () => {
+  const TARGETING_DONE_KEY = "OPTABLE_TARGETING_DONE";
+
+  beforeEach(() => {
+    sessionStorage.clear();
+    jest.restoreAllMocks();
+  });
+
+  it("marks targeting as done and returns true for a bot", () => {
+    jest.spyOn(navigator, "userAgent", "get").mockReturnValue("Googlebot/2.1");
+    expect(SkipTargetingForBots()).toBe(true);
+    expect(sessionStorage.getItem(TARGETING_DONE_KEY)).toBe("1");
+  });
+
+  it("is a no-op and returns false for a real user", () => {
+    jest
+      .spyOn(navigator, "userAgent", "get")
+      .mockReturnValue(
+        "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
+      );
+    expect(SkipTargetingForBots()).toBe(false);
+    expect(sessionStorage.getItem(TARGETING_DONE_KEY)).toBeNull();
+  });
+});
+
 describe("determineABTest", () => {
   // Mock Math.random to control the random bucket selection
   let originalMathRandom;
diff --git a/lib/edge/targeting.ts b/lib/edge/targeting.ts
index 29cc10f..9fe95ee 100644
--- a/lib/edge/targeting.ts
+++ b/lib/edge/targeting.ts
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 import type { ResolvedConfig, ABTestConfig, MatcherOverride } from "../config";
 import { fetch } from "../core/network";
 import { LocalStorage } from "../core/storage";
+import { isBot } from "../addons/botDetection";
 import * as ortb2 from "iab-openrtb/v26";
 import * as adcom from "iab-adcom";
 import { sendTargetingUpdateEvent } from "../core/events/cache-refresh";
@@ -40,6 +41,8 @@ type TargetingResponse = {
   split_test_assignment?: string;
 };
 
+const TARGETING_DONE_KEY = "OPTABLE_TARGETING_DONE";
+
 // Determine which A/B test (if any) should be used for this request
 function determineABTest(abTests?: ABTestConfig[]): ABTestConfig | null {
   if (!abTests || abTests.length === 0) {
@@ -117,6 +120,23 @@ function TargetingClearCache(config: ResolvedConfig) {
   ls.clearTargeting();
 }
 
+/**
+ * Skip targeting for bots by marking targeting as already done,
+ * so RTD short-circuits and returns null. No-op for real users.
+ * Returns whether the request was identified as a bot.
+ */
+export function SkipTargetingForBots(): boolean {
+  try {
+    if (typeof isBot === "function" && isBot()) {
+      sessionStorage.setItem(TARGETING_DONE_KEY, "1");
+      return true;
+    }
+  } catch {
+    // isBot is unavailable or threw; fall through and treat as a real user.
+  }
+  return false;
+}
+
 // Prebid.js supports setting ortb2 object for compatible bidder adapters.
 //
 // We return the contents to be merged in ortb2 and passed to