Troubleshooting is one of the repeated tasks for every digital advertising campaign manager. Mostly, setup issues could lead to potential delivery issues on digital ad campaigns. We mostly do the setup mistakes on certain fields. A good campaign manager should not do any setup mistakes.
SRIDARAN BASKARAN
If you are a campaign manager then you should face this question at least twice a day from your clients “Why is this campaign not delivering?”. The campaign manager’s responsibility is to troubleshoot the ad campaigns. Most of the time, the delivery issues occurred due to setup mistakes we did.
Human Error is common in every work. But, the mistakes should be reduced when your experience increases. If you make the same mistakes again and again then there is no difference between you and a fresher. Based on my previous experiences, I have shared a few common setup mistakes everyone made when setting up the ad campaigns. These suggestions will help you to become a good campaign manager from the start.
1. Flight and Budget
Whether is a Facebook ad campaign or any campaign on any leading demand side platforms, the flight duration and budget are very important. Most clients run their ad campaigns to show their promo and seasonal offers to their potential customers. So, showing ads for a particular time duration is very important for every ad campaign. If you make any mistakes on these two settings then you may face delivery issues.
The first step in the campaign optimization process is to check the setup issues. If you avoid setup issues then you can avoid most of the delivery issues. So, when you setup your ad campaign, make sure to check the flight duration at all levels. For example Campaign Level, Ad Group Level, Creative Level/Ad Level. Also, make sure your campaign total budget is aligned with sub-levels to avoid delivery issues, Underspend/Overspend.
Example: Client Instruction For Facebook Campaign:: $500 budget and Flight Duration Jan 01 – Jan 31
In Facebook ads manager, you can set the budget at the campaign level so you will set $500 at the campaign level. You should set the start date and end date at the adset level. If you set the wrong duration at the adset level it could lead to delivery issues. For example, if you set the flight duration as Jan 01 to Jan 15 then the campaign delivers a $500 budget within Jan 15. If you set the wrong end date as Feb 28 then the campaign underspends the budget when you calculate the spent for Jan 01 to Jan 31.
2. All Level Active
Most of us made this mistake when setting up an ad campaign. In every ad platform, all levels of a campaign should be active to deliver ad impressions. So, once you launch your campaign check the all-level active status.
For example, if we duplicate the campaign with paused ads in the Facebook ads manager, the ads remain the same status on the newly created campaign. So, we should manually turn on the ads. If you forget to play all levels then your campaign won’t deliver any impressions.
For best practice, please check whether the campaign is delivering impressions a few hours later you have activated the ad campaign.
3. Forecaster
Almost all demand side platforms have the forecaster facility. Using a forecaster tool, you can check the audience availability for the current settings of your ad campaign. Once you setup your ad campaign please check the forecaster tool and make sure it shows the availability. If the forecaster tool doesn’t show enough audience availability then you should alter the targetings. If you failed to alter the targetings then you may face delivery issues.
4. Incorrect Targeting
As per the usual process, clients provide the media plan to the campaign manager. The campaign manager’s role is to setup the campaign as per the media plan and fulfill their goal. Campaign managers should use correct targeting to run their ad campaigns. For example, if the client requested us to run their ad campaign on luxury tactic means we should use luxury audience categories under the luxury tactic ad groups.
If we incorrectly target different segments or contextual targets or geo means we should face the delivery issue.
5. Incorrect Ads
This is one of the most common mistakes. Running the correct ad preview is very important for every digital ad campaign. Sometimes clients provide different groups of previews for each tactic. At that time, we should properly upload and associate the ads per their request. So, once we have done all our work we should cross-check everything to avoid manual mistakes.
6. Check Campaign Delivery Regularly
Almost all demand side platforms follow their algorithm to deliver ads. So, some platforms fulfill the campaign’s goal and some platforms don’t. So, monitor the campaign delivery and performance on regular basis.
Monitoring campaign delivery and performance is a good practice for a “good ad campaign manager”
Hi Sridaran Baskaran,
For the past 3 month I am following your page and gives me good analytical things. Pease make more subject knowledge..
Just a thoughts can you please post separate DV360 programmatic things in new tab for basics to
expect level.
1. Media Planning or Strategy plan.
2. Execution – Which shows how to setup the Advertiser, Campaign, Insertion Order, Line item and creative (Ad groups for youTube).
3. Optimization with the scenarios (CPM, CPC, CPL etc..)
4. Audit and reporting.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Arunmozhivarman, Thanks for following my website. I will provide separate content for DV360 as you request. Thank You!