Campaign Optimization : Performance is very important for every programmatic ad campaign. Some ad campaigns perform well from the start but most ad campaigns won’t perform well. So, ad campaign managers optimize to increase the performance of an ad campaign. Programmatic Ad Campaign Optimization is explained here.
Performance may differ per the client’s goal. Some clients may expect certain Clicks, Click Through Rate (CTR), leads, form completion, complete views, etc. Normally, campaign managers create the ad campaign with their knowledge and experiences. Some campaigns do not perform well from the start due to many reasons we discussed later in this article. It’s the campaign manager’s responsibility to analyze the performance drop and take actions to improve the performance [Campaign Optimizations]. The matter discussed in this article will help you to optimize any programmatic ad campaign on platforms like DV360, Facebook Advertising, Any other demand side platforms, etc.
Content :
What Is Ad Campaign Performance?
How To Analyze The Campaign Performance Drop?
How To Optimize The Campaign To Increase The Performance?
Read this post also : How To Optimize Low Delivery Programmatic Ad Campaign?
What Is Ad Campaign Performance?
As I said above, the ad campaign performance varies depending upon the client’s goal. Many key metrics are available in digital advertising to measure the goal.
Reach/Impressions: Many brands run their ad campaign to create brand awareness for their new products. In this situation, their goal is to reach the maximum number of people. So, reach or impression is the goal here. Clients provide some budget and impressions to run their ad campaign. Ad campaign managers reach the impressions within the given budget.
Clicks: Certain brands run their ad campaign to increase the number of visitors to the landing page. So, here their goal is Clicks. Clients expect more people to visit their landing page by clicking the ad from their campaign. Clients provide the expected click count and price for each click. Ad campaign managers run the ad campaign to get the required clicks within the given budget.
CTR: Certain brands run their brand awareness ad campaign by CTR goal. If their CTR goal is 0.50% then the ad campaign should receive 5 clicks and more for 1000 impressions. So, based on the budget you should deliver the impressions with the CTR goal.
Leads: Some brands run their ad campaign to increase sales, form submissions, etc. So, they require a certain amount of leads for their campaign budget.
Cost Per Actions: Some clients run their ad campaign for a certain budget and cost per conversion. To meet the cost per actions goal, the campaign should receive a certain amount of actions within the budget. Normally, low cost per action is good for the campaign.
Complete Views and View Through Rate: Many brands are interested in running video campaigns on many platforms. They measure the campaign goal by Complete Views and View Through Rate. Complete views mean how many ads are fully viewed by the user.
How To Analyze The Campaign Performance Drop?
The first step for campaign optimization is “analyzing the performance”. Campaign managers can directly check the performance numbers from the platforms or can run the performance report. I suggest you maintain the tracker for pacing calculation and performance calculation. My pacing tracker is looking complicated because I ran many campaigns with different goals. Here I have attached the very simple pacing tracker for you [Download Here].
For impression based campaigns, you should check the performance and do some calculations to make sure whether this campaign can fulfill the goal if it delivers like the previous day for the remaining days. Goal Projection = Impressions Served Till Yesterday + (Yesterday Impressions* Remaining Days).
For click based campaigns, this calculation will be, Goal Projection = Clicks Served Till Yesterday + (Yesterday Clicks* Remaining Days)
For action based campaign, this calculation will be Goal Projection = Actions Served Till Yesterday + (Yesterday Actions* Remaining Days)
CTR is very important for display programmatic ad campaigns. Clients normally mention their expected click through rate in the media plan. So, campaign managers should run their campaigns with appropriate CTR. If the campaign hasn’t achieved the CTR goal then campaign managers should do optimizations.
Cost Per Conversion, mostly clients won’t mention cost per conversion directly. But, it should be low. So, only the client can acquire many actions within their budget. If you see any jump in the cost per conversion price then do optimizations to lower this cost.
VTR, view through rate is the goal for video campaigns. Clients mention their expected view through rate goals in the media plan. VTR means, how much percent of complete views occurred per impressions. VTR = Complete Views/Impressions.
How To Optimize The Campaign To Increase The Performance?
Achieving the expected performance is very important for every ad campaign. If the campaign does not perform well then campaign managers should optimize the campaign and monitor the performance. Many programmatic ad platforms are available here to run the ad campaigns. You can apply my campaign optimization suggestions to any platform.
We can divide the optimization process into four parts,
1. Identify the cause
2. Reallocate the budget
3. Conduct A/B Test
4. Try new targetings and assets
1. Identify the cause
If you want to save the water from a broken bucket then you should first find out the leakage parts or holes that cause the water leakage. Once you find the leakage part you can easily do patch-up work and save the water.
Identify Poor Performing Inventories: Normally, demand side platforms connect with many inventory sources to provide vast reach possibilities for the advertisers. It’s the advertiser’s or campaign manager’s decision to include or exclude certain inventory sources. If any campaign delivers well without performing, you should run a report and identify the inventory source that delivers more with fewer performance returns.
Please exclude such poor inventory sources from your campaign to improve the performance. Once you have done this, please monitor the delivery and performance of the campaign. If you see any delivery drop then you should do some alternative optimizations.
Identify Poor Performing Sites/Apps: Instead of pausing entire inventory sources, the campaign managers can run site level reports and identify the poor performing apps and sites. You can blacklist the identified poor performing sites and apps. So, your campaign will continue to run on the remaining sites and apps.
Tighten The Frequency Cap: Already we discussed the importance of frequency capping. Setting a higher frequency cap may increase the delivery and affect the performance. So, reduce the frequency cap a little bit and check the performance.
Pause Poor Performing Targetings: Whenever you setup the campaign please try to split the lines or ad groups as much as possible. For example, luxury, engineering, contextual, retargeting, etc. So that you can easily check the performance for each targeting and pause the poor performing tactics easily.
Reallocate the budget
In the above section, I have asked you to pause the entire inventory or ad groups that are not performing well. Instead, run the performance report for the ad campaign and find the best performing ad groups. Once you did, allocate more budget towards the best performing ad groups and reduce the budget for the poor performing ad groups. In this way, you can increase the performance without pause anything.
Conduct A/B Test
Many brands mostly conduct A/B tests with a certain percentage of budget before launching the main campaign. A/B test will be helpful to find the best creatives, best tactics, and best targeting for their brands. With the help of A/B test results, brands can run their ad campaigns more effectively.
If the client does not have interested to run the A/B test then they can run a variety of creatives and targets on their campaign. After a few weeks they can check the performance and continue the best performing one.
Try new targetings and assets
Acquiring performance from the digital ad campaign is not an easy task. The campaign managers should try various methods to acquire the results. Here, I will suggest some basic methods to run the ad campaign better.
We mostly divide the targeting groups by interest, contextual, behavioral, and retargeting. When you setup the ad campaign, try to create different ad groups or lines like the below,
Create segments by using categories from different data providers. Example: If the client provides “luxury” targeting then create one segment by selecting a luxury category from the data provider Lotame and create another segment by selecting a luxury category from data provider Datalogix. Run both segments under each ad group. After a few weeks, check the performance and pause the poor performing ad group.
Likely, create retargeting ad groups with different recency and find the best performing ad groups.
Based on your experience, you can create a variety of ad groups and test them for a few weeks to identify the best performing ad groups.
Most campaign managers alter the targeting after their campaigns are under pacing or underperforming. For example, they just create the ad campaign with one behavioral segment from one data provider and just create one recency retargeting ad group. After a few weeks, they will check the performance. If the campaign is doing well they will continue to run the same setup. Otherwise, they will change the targetings. Mostly, clients run their ad campaigns for one month. So, we don’t have much time to choose alternative targeting for our campaign. Better we can create and test multiple ad groups from the start to avoid any issues.
Conclusion
Campaign managers are working hard to get good performance from their ad campaigns. But, it’s not an easy task. Normally, every campaign managers have their own ways to achieve results. Here, I have shared my own ways with you. These programmatic ad campaign optimization tips will help you to run your ad campaigns on any platform. If you are having any other optimization tips then please share them in the comment section.
Read this post also : How To Optimize Low Delivery Programmatic Ad Campaign?
