Throughout the course of a campaign, marketers must know the importance of a little TLC during the flight dates to ensure seamless success. But, where to start? We know optimizations can be hard to address, so our team at Choozle has put together our best tips and tricks for the trade.
From common programmatic campaign optimization questions to creative specs, we’re here to guide your advertising and marketing needs to victory!
Tip #1: Take a look at the pacing of your campaign
The pacing of your campaign and ad groups can be an early sign for campaign performance. Ask yourself the following questions:
Is your campaign pacing correctly?
Pacing is the measurement of your campaign’s spending/serving in full for the given flights of each campaign. Below are a few main points to consider to help outpacing.
- Under Pacing
If under pacing, your base bid and your frequency settings will be two main factors to help get pacing under control. Typically, a campaign is not bidding competitively enough in the open market to win impressions (check your win rate % to be sure). To help, increase your base bid incrementally until pacing gets better and your win rate increases. In conjunction with increasing your base bid, you will also want to increase your frequency to help serve more impressions. A healthy win rate is going to fall in the 20 percent to 35 percent range. If you are under 20 percent, it would be best to do the above optimizations. If you are above 35 percent win rate, and still under pacing, you may want to think about expanding your audience, geolocations, or add in additional tactics as you are already winning the majority of the impressions available and we will need to look elsewhere to pick up available impressions. - Over Pacing
If over pacing (pacing around 110 percent and up) think about decreasing your base and max bids as this will help to bring down the pacing a bit. Keep an eye on your win rate and only decrease bids if you have a win rate of 35 percent and above. This will help to optimize your bids and allow for more efficient media spend.
What’s your win rate?
Win rate measures the number of impressions won out of those bid on. Your win rate percentage will indicate if your base bids are high enough to win inventory.
If your win rate is between 10 and 30 percent or higher, then great news–your campaign is spending and winning inventory!
Under 10 percent? Try to increase frequency, expand your targeting parameters, or add in additional third-party data audiences.
Tip #2: Align your optimizations for performance with your goals.
Your campaign and ad group goals should be used as guidelines on what optimizations to make. Ensuring you have proper goal setting is the most important first step in optimizing your campaign and ad groups.
The biggest question you need to ask yourself is, what’s the campaign goal or campaign KPI?
Depending on your answer you can use these tips below to make optimizations on your campaign that drive better results.
If reachEnable cross-device targeting.
Add additional targeting such as third-party data segments, categories, or keywords.
Lower your frequency cap from three impressions every eight hours to one impression every four hours.
If click-through rate (CTR)
Set (or reset) your CTR goal of 0.1% to 0.15%.
Create a preferred list of high-performing sites and/or create a block list of low-performing sites.
Update your fold bid adjustments to bid higher on above-the-fold inventory and lower on below-the-fold.
If cost-per-click (CPC)
Create a preferred list with sites garnering your desired CPC and/or a block list with inventory that’s outside of your desired CPC range.
Optimize toward supply vendors that are garnering your desired CPC.
Remove browsers yielding a high CPC.
If cost per completed view (CPCV) or completion rate
Build a preferred list with sites garnering your desired CPCV and/or a block list with inventory that’s outside of your desired CPCV range.
Remove in-banner video inventory and/or set your video creative as non-skippable to bid exclusively on inventory that has a higher viewability.
Implement a creative event retargeting ad group to drive lower-funnel conversion actions. Segment your creative event retargeting audiences based on how much of the video they have watched with other creative formats like display.
If cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
To optimize toward CPA, set your desired cost-per-acquisition, which is the cost you wish to pay for a user to convert once.
Implement a retargeting ad group to drive lower-funnel conversion actions.
Segment your retargeting audiences based on the pages they visited within the site. People who get to a product details page are more valuable than those who only visit the homepage. People who make it to the cart but leave without finalizing their purchase are likely your most valuable users.
Use recency bid adjustments to bid more aggressively on users that are new to your retargeting audience. Bid less aggressively on users that have entered the retargeting pool over a month ago.
CPA Tip: A “conversion” does not always have to be an actual purchase. It can be almost any measurable event that drives value to your brand. Say, for example, when users visit the “Find a Location” page, fill out a form, click to watch a video on the site, or visit a product details page.
Tip #3: If you need help with campaign conversion troubleshooting
If your campaign has been running and you’re not seeing the results you’d expect, don’t forget to review the assets and setup for your campaign ad groups. These are a few areas where you can double-check to ensure the campaign is set up successfully.
Conversion URL:
Was a conversion URL provided during the campaign setup? This is necessary to track conversions as well as CPA.
Smart Container Tag:
Is the Smart Container Tag placed before the close of the header on the conversion event’s root URL?
Targeting:
Is a relevant audience being targeted? Can different targeting be tested?
Creative:
Is the creative clear and compelling? Does the messaging resonate with your audience(s)? Does the creative have a clear call-to-action? Are there new creatives that could be tested?
Landing page:
Landing pages are hugely important to the conversion event. Is the landing page specific to the campaign? On average, a unique landing page (in comparison to just linking through to the website homepage) has better results, as it gives a much clearer desired path for the user to take. There are easy tools, such as InstaPage if you don’t have the resources.
Have questions about how to optimize your campaign? Reach out to our team today.
