Making adjustments post-launch
One of the real advantages of online advertising is the ability to make changes as you go on. But even the slightest adjustments can have a huge impact.
Here's a list of best practices to study up on before you start tweaking the campaign.
The basics
Make small adjustments rather than major campaign changes
Overall, we recommend making small adjustments and taking a step-by-step approach to any large scale changes. This will set up your campaign for the best possible performance.
Limit the frequency and quantity of changes for optimal results.
It’s important to focus on one type of change at a time. This gives you the best chance to monitor and understand the effects it has on your campaign. Additionally, you should wait at least 72 hours before making any further adjustments to keep from complicating the process – and perhaps creating bigger problems than you had before.
The specifics
- Changing your frequency.
Frequency is your main lever if you are measuring success in terms of the number of people who see your ads, and the number of times they see them. The lower your frequency, the fewer times a user will be able to see your ad each day.
When changing frequency, spread small changes over time rather than making one big adjustment. It’s best not to raise or lower your frequency by more than 3-4 impressions (per day) at a time. In addition, you shouldn’t change your frequency for at least 72 hours following any other changes to your campaign.
- Changing your inventory.
Adding inventory to your campaign’s target is a good way to increase scale and reach. However, if you see little volume change after increasing your inventory, it’s likely your bid is too low.
If you’d like to remove inventory from your target, remember that overall performance, volume, and reach may decline as the number of available impressions will be smaller. Again, if your bid is not competitive, your campaign may miss out on good inventory – and highly-qualified users.
- Changing your user targeting.
It’s a good idea to use only one type of targeting.
Combining multiple targets – for example, adding multiple contextual segments to a campaign – generally yields poor results.
Increasing your targeting segments will generally increase the size your campaign as well as the ability to deliver it, so long as your campaign has a competitive bid.
Also, you should only add similar segments to those your campaign is already targeting. For example, if you are targeting an audience behavior (for example, Auto Intended), you should only add other audience behaviors.
- Adding\Pausing media.
Even top-performing banners may begin to run out of steam after a while. If you notice a decline in performance after a banner has been running for a number of weeks, it’s a good idea to test out a new creative concept.
When adding creative units – also called media – to a campaign, make sure you have no more than 10 banners for every $5K in your budget.
When pausing media, you need to consider the remaining creatives. If you pause or remove the only creative you have in a particular size, your campaign reach and volume may decrease significantly.
- Changing your Geo-Targeting
As with other changes to your campaign, it is best to limit the number of geo-targeting changes you make. In fact, the only mid-campaign change to geo-targeting that we advise is the addition of a state that’s in close proximity to your original target. Remember though, if your campaign bid isn’t competitive, adding geos may not increase your campaign’s volume.
- Changing your bid
As we’ve stressed throughout this section, having a competitive bid is of the utmost importance to your campaign’s success. However, as with any other changes, it is best to wait at least 72 hours between adjustments – unless you’re absolutely certain your bid is still not competitive.
Making changes too frequently will hurt the performance of your campaign and prevent you from accurately assessing your campaign’s performance. If you're running a campaign on Retargeting Base, give it time to collect feedback from a new setting in order to optimize campaign performance properly.
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