CPA Target Bidding Case Study: Facts & Stats

By Jaz Singh

June 21, 2022

Advertising

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Why spend time manually optimizing your campaigns when automation is easier than ever? Reshape your online presence, maximize your conversions, drive home your offers and send your campaign costs down in a few clicks with CPA Target Bidding. 

We have gathered a quickfire guide to CPA Target Bidding to help you conquer peaks in 2022. 

We will help you go to the bottom of what in fact CPA Target Bidding is? We’ll hold your hand tight as we walk together through the process of setting up your own Target CPA. Sounds interesting? 😏 That’s not it! We will also share some secrets about the benefits of Target CPA Bidding, tips, case study, and even Conversation & Adoption Rates over the past five months 😱. And that’s not all! Stick with us and you’ll discover more!

What is CPA Target Bidding? ✅ 

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll keep the explanation light. CPA Target is a form of bidding algorithm that optimizes your campaign’s bids based on its Target and CVR to maximize conversion volumes while minimizing costs. 

Our CPA Target algorithms identify the optimal bid per traffic segment for your campaign by adjusting to traffic performance changes that fluctuate over time.

Set up is super simple. When creating a new campaign, all you need to do is select the CPA Target Bidding Feature. From there, you’re in a big wide world of real-time, online bidding, where scores of advertisers compete to place offers on leading websites and the wealthiest traffic segments.  

🐇✨🕳️ Kind of like your very own programmatic Alice in WonderLand 🐇✨🕳

So, to go into a little more detail? You’ll create a new campaign, set a CPA Target price as well as a conversion/goal tracking postback. From there, we will automatically test your offer on various supply sources to identify converting traffic segments and secure a lower CPA (cost per acquisition) to what you initially set. 

CPA Target Bidding Lifecycle

The processing power and conversion capability of the CPA Target Bidding algorithm are genuinely off the charts. But, like most platforms driven by machine learning, it takes a little time for it to understand the segments you’re going after and adapt its AI to your needs. 

Learning Phase ✏️ ✏️ ✏️ 

The CPA Target algorithm will go through an exploration phase. It will take a little time to find the best-performing segments for your offer (s). Around this time, the conversion costs per segment may exceed the target. This phase usually takes around two days to complete. But after that, you’ll never look back! 

As the algorithm starts to understand your campaign’s best-performing segments, it will move into the exploitation phase.

Exploitation Phase ⚙️⚙️⚙️

Once the CPA Target algorithm has locked down the top-performing segments for your campaign, it starts to bring you the maximum number of conversions. From this point onwards, the Target Bidding software will sync with your campaign needs and will need to undergo a learning phase again only for new traffic sources that Adcash onboards. 

You can find out more about the CPA Target Bid Type here.

Before we move on to a few real-world examples of CPA in action…

How Do You Set Up Your Own CPA Target Bid? 🧐

First things first, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll be bidding using the Express Campaign or the Advanced Campaign on the Adcash Advertiser platform

For setting up CPA Target Bidding on the Express Campaign

  • Navigate to the “Bid Section” on the “Budget Tab”
  • Click the “CPA Target” button. 
  • Below that, fill in your “CPA Target” (Cost per conversion). 
  • You will then need to set conversion tracking in place.
  • Finally, specify your “Daily Budget,” it will provide a guideline for the algorithm to effectively distribute your campaign budget throughout the day.

CPA target Screengrab

Setting up CPA Target Bidding on the Advanced Campaign.

  • Navigate to the “Bid Section” on the “Budget Tab.” 
  • Click the “CPA Target” button.
  • From there, set your target price for all countries targeted. Note that the Target Price (price per conversion) can be different for each country.
  • You will then need to set conversion tracking in place.
  • Hit the “Save” button.
  • Finally, specify your “Daily Budget,” it will provide a guideline for the algorithm to effectively distribute your campaign budget throughout the day.

CPA Target Bid Screenshot

Moving along, it helps to take the below into account when deciding on your ideal bid type.

What are the Benefits of CPA Target Bidding? 🤫

The CPA Target Bidding Software is automation at its finest. The algorithm does the heavy lifting and frees up time in your life to focus on more important things. The idea is to boost efficiency, champion reliability, and lower campaign costs at the same time. Think of CPA Target Bidding as your very own streamlined, hyper-effective “campaign optimization factory,” running 24/’7, at total capacity, with higher revenue to show for it. When you add CPA Target Bidding to your overall strategy, you stand to get…

Higher Conversions at a Lower Price 🚀🚀🚀

With CPA Target, you streamline your campaign bidding process from the get-go. The algorithm will eliminate all non-converting traffic and identify optimal bids per traffic segment that actually convert. Added to that, the CPA Target Bidding Feature almost always comes in lower than your set CPA Target, meaning you save on conversion costs. 

Time Saved on Campaign Creation and Optimization ⏰⏰⏰

The CPA Target sets bids automatically, meaning you’ll never need to go in and manually set bidding amounts. Once you’ve placed your bid, and once the algorithm knows which traffic segments it needs to go after, all that’s left to do is run your campaign, sit back, and wait for the results.

Frequent Updates and Cutting-Edge Placements 💪💪💪

Remember that CPA Target Bidding works in real-time. It will analyze traffic fluctuations and existing targets to ensure that your bids consistently make their way to the strongest traffic segments. 

CPA Target Adoption Rates 📊

With the above in mind, it’s time to crunch down into some numbers. Over the last six months, we’ve delivered more than 12.5 million conversions through CPA Target. Also, we’ve seen more of our online advertisers adding CPA Target Bidding to their existing online strategy than ever before. As of December 2021, CPA Target adoption rates have risen over 33%.

CPA Target: Monthly Conversions and Adoption

CPA Target: Online Advertiser Conversion and Adoption (courtesy of Adcash) 

Below, you’ll find a “Cost vs. Target” comparison for the CPA Target Bidding Feature. Over the last six months, the average conversion cost has come in lower than the target time and again. Advertisers have consistently saved on their conversion costs while getting the best traffic placements and exposure to top websites.  

Cost Vs. Target

CPA Target, Real Cost, and Ratio Cost Vs. Target (courtesy of Adcash)

CPA Target Bidding Set Up Tips 🙌

CPA Target takes the heavy lifting out of campaign optimization. With a few simple setup tips, you’ll be saving and earning on a host of different campaigns before you know it. Keep the below in mind when setting up your campaign.

Match your landing page with the right supply source

When putting together your landing page, make sure you’re tailoring it to the right traffic. Find your niche and target top-converting traffic sources with unique landing pages and CTA’s. Find out more about landing page optimization with this handy Guide to Landing Pages.

Set Higher CPA Target Bids

The CPA Target tends to deliver conversions at a lower price than your initially targeted cost. So, trust it! It won’t let you down! Set your bidding higher than you might have done in the past and, if your targeting is accurate (and it ends up converting nicely), you’ll get cheaper conversions every time!

Set a reasonable daily budget

If you aim at spending $15 daily (or similar), your chances of getting proper exposure and increased traffic volumes are relatively low. You’ll need to have enough skin in the game for you to get back your initial budget, plus a whole lot more! Send your campaign buy-in through to the CPA Target motherboard and bid according to the going target.

And, as we come to the end of our CPA Target bidding round-up, here’s a practical example of CPA in action.

CPA Target Bidding Case Study 📚

An Affiliate marketer using Adcash as one of his primary traffic sources recently put together a CPA Target campaign to promote a well-known VPN product. They’ve been kind enough to share their results with us.

Offer Type:  VPN
Offer:  NordVPN (standard design landing page).
Targeting Region:  Multiple
Ad Format:  Pop, Interstitial, In-Page Push
OS:  Desktop & Mobile
Bid Type:  CPA Target Bidding (with a $40 CPA goal)
Website Thematic Targeting  Arts & Entertainment related websites only

From April to August 2021, they ran the campaign across 36 different geos with the same CPA Target set across the board (a combination of tier 1, 2, and 3). 

The campaign ran across both Desktop, and Mobile split according to 3 top ad formats (Pop,  Interstitial, and In-Page Push), with individual campaigns per ad format.

It quickly became apparent that the CPA Target Bidding tool helped deliver conversions below target. For this reason, it was easy to scale up the campaign by increasing daily spendings (which were initially set at 150e/day).

Desktop Vs. Mobile

Desktop took 95% of all conversions, with an Actual CPA vs. Target CPA ratio of 20.5% (Average conversion cost of $8.2 vs. target set at $40). In comparison, Mobile came out to 5% of all conversions, with an Actual CPA vs. Target CPA of 51.4% (Average conversion cost of $20.5 vs. target set at $40).

The top-performing geos were The United States, The United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Sweden in terms of conversions volume.

CPA Country Chart - Case Study

Additionally, there was no need to blacklist low-performing traffic sources manually. The automated bidding structure was adjusting its bids to account for low converting sources and quickly stopped buying from them.

CPA Target - Case Study Example - NordVPN

To improve the overall ROAS further, they made some adjustments to the Operating System and Device targeting. Those with the lowest performance were removed entirely, although the automated bidding was doing it by itself. However, in this case, it was a little quicker to take care of this manually.

After having checked users’ quality with the advertisers, there was room for an affiliate payout increase, so the ROAS improved even further. Overall, the actual CPA ended up being around 80% cheaper than the target, which is pretty unbelievable, even for a Tier 1 geo! 

The overall savings from using CPA Target Bidding ran into the tens of thousands. And the best part?  As of writing this, the conversions continue to keep streaming in at a higher level than usual. There was a massively visible difference between Target Spending when setting up the campaign vs. the actual budget leaving the advertiser’s account.

CPA Target Spending vs. Actual Spending

 

That’s that. We hope your next campaign using CPA Target Bidding will be the best yet! As always, reach out to us right here if you have any questions or want to boost your performance with tailored tips. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the box below, and we’ll make sure we get in touch pronto!  

Bye for now!

 

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Jaz Singh

Content Manager, Adcash

Hailing from London, Jaz traded in the life of rainy Britain for the snowy pastures of Estonia. Since joining the ever-exciting world of Adcash, his major preoccupations have included writing punchy copy, perusing meme pages for the sake of social media strategy research, and overusing the 🤙 emoji.

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