Campaign Bidding Strategy for Beginners

Campaign bidding can seem daunting and confusing when you first start off in the online advertising world. However, understanding the different types of bidding strategies available and how to use them is crucial to the success of a campaign. With the right ingredients, you’ll have a high-performing campaign in no time.

Exceeding your campaign results is possible with a fat wallet. We’re not saying you won’t succeed with a small budget; we just want to point out a pattern we’ve noticed with our high-performing advertisers. More options and data are available to optimize your campaign when you have a larger budget.

Alright, let’s get into it! 

Finding the best campaign bidding strategy for you starts with campaign creation. Don’t worry if you haven’t or don’t know how to create campaign. We have a complete campaign creation guide to help you along the way. If you prefer video, check out our YouTube video on how to create campaigns.

 

For those that have set up a campaign, log in with your credentials if you’re not already on the Adcash advertiser homepage. Go to “Campaigns” on the left panel. Select any of your already created campaigns from the list. Then, click over to the fourth step, “Budget.” Your page should look something like this:

Bid type is an extremely important factor to consider in your media-buying strategy as it influences the competitiveness of your campaign(s). As an online advertiser, you may be familiar, but for those that aren’t, let’s chat a bit about the most common bidding types.

Cost-Per-Mille (CPM) Bidding Strategy

The cost per mille (CPM) bidding strategy is another strategy you should know. Advertisers pay for the number of impressions the ad receives. You can limit this in the frequency capping section. Moreover, you can reach a larger audience without paying for clicks, which is a cost-effective approach to campaign budgeting. If you’re in need of an increase in brand awareness, CPM bidding is a good bet.

CPA Target Automatic Bidding Strategy

Automated bidding is a type of bidding that uses machine learning algorithms to optimize bids for the best possible performance. The CPA Target bid option is where you can automate your campaign bid, suitable for those who need to become more familiar with the bidding process. The CPA target option can help you save time and improve your campaign efficiency. The algorithm works by processing in two phases:

• Learning phase – let the algorithm do the dirty work for you. During this crucial phase, your campaign will map out the best solutions for you to profit.
• Exploitation phase – now that the algorithm is locked in on the best-performing options, it will confidently release your campaign to receive the maximum conversions possible.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bidding Strategy

The cost-per-click (CPC) bidding strategy is one of the most popular bidding strategies for beginners. In this strategy, advertisers only pay when users click on their ad. CPC bidding is often used for search advertising, where advertisers bid on specific keywords to show their ads to relevant searchers.

CPC bidding lets you control costs and set a maximum bid for each click, allowing for a more comprehensive campaign budget and spending practices. Additionally, On compatible ad-formats (all except Pop-Under Ads), CPC bidding can result in a high return on ad spend (ROAS) as advertisers only pay for users more likely to convert.

If you’re interested in more information or want to better understand the differences between the three, read here.

Advanced CPM Bidding Strategy: 3 bids per country 👈

So you’ve decided to select “CPM” as your campaign bid type, you’ve set your campaign frequency capping and you now have to choose whether to pick the “3 bids per country” or “1 bid per country” option.

To better understand the difference between the two, let’s look at the example campaign side-to-side.

🚨Important! You must select CPM to continue to the quality tiers bidding interface (aka “3 bids per country”).

When picking the “3 bids per country” option, you can adjust your campaign’s bids according to traffic performance. The first tier, Quality tier 1, has the highest conversion rate with a relatively low volume of traffic available. The second tier, Quality tier 2, consists of a solid volume of good converting supply, meaning there is room for competitive bidding with a sizable profitability opportunity. The third tier, Quality tier 3, has the lowest conversion rate and the highest volume. The last tier doesn’t mean it’s useless or worthless. Depending on your strategy, having a high volume might be a norm for your company as you also experience conversions at a higher volume.

Now that we quickly covered quality tiers let’s look at the 1 bid per country option and compare the two.

1 bid per country:

 

3 bids per country:

In the example above, pop-under ads were the ad format that targeted Estonia and Turkey. The average bid in Estonia, when choosing the “1 bid per country” option, is $4.27 (which automatically rules you out from competing in Quality tier 1 bid as the average ($5.20) is higher than $4.27). By doing so, you’ve potentially unintentionally limited yourself from high-converting traffic. Choosing this option (1 bid per country) doesn’t mean you won’t receive a large number of conversions. Your ad just won’t be able to compete against other advertisers that have picked the “3 bids per country” option, at least regarding our Quality tier 1 supply.

On the other hand, your “1 bid per country” campaign will have a competitive CPM bid in both quality tiers 2 and 3. However, if you noticed, the average bid for quality tier 2 is $4.21, $0.06 lower than in the 1 bid per country option, and $3.95, $0.32 lower than in the 1 bid per country option. The likelihood of you paying more than others to compete in the same arena is higher if you choose 1 bid per country.

In most cases, when running a CPM campaign, it is highly recommended to set “3 bids” rather than “1 bid per country”. Doing so will help ensure your campaign is competitive across all of our “traffic quality tiers” while ensuring you aren’t overpaying for lower-quality traffic.

Those are our strategies to get you promoted from novice to professional. Feel free to contact your manager or us if you have any questions. Take it step-by-step; before you know it, you’ll be proficient in campaign bidding.

Good luck, and let us know what works and doesn’t work for your campaign.

-Adcash