Campaign Pre-Launch Checklist & Recommendations
Budget management
Use Automated budget allocation at the campaign level to let CMax automatically distribute the budget across the line items with maximal efficiency.
When running a single campaign to achieve multiple KPIs, such as increasing traffic to your Product Detail Pages (PDPs) while also ensuring a strong Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), we recommend utilizing manual budget allocation. This approach allows you to distribute your budget across various line items effectively, each targeting different objectives.
Ensure that the budget type (lifetime/monthly/daily) meets your spending goals. If you specify the daily budget type, the campaign budget you specify will spend every day during the campaign flight dates.
Campaign creation timeline
To ensure a smooth trading process, it is essential to create a campaign and its associated line items at least one day in advance. This is important because audience calculation may take up to 24 hours.
If you require line item validation from the client or are waiting for creative approval from the retailer, please ensure to create the campaign at least three days before the planned start date of trading.
Balances
Ensure the campaign is associated with an active Balance. Find out more about balances.
Frequency capping
The frequency cap can be set on the line item level as well. If the frequency cap is set on the campaign level, it overwrites the frequency cap set for line items assigned to this campaign.
Depending on the user's place in the conversion funnel defined by various user characteristics like time since the last visit to brand PDP, previous purchases, etc, the optimizer will decide how many displays will be optimal to drive the specific user towards the target conversion action.
That explains why we don’t recommend applying frequency capping when running a campaign that optimizes revenue and conversions.
Line Item Pre-Launch Checklist & Recommendations
Dates
Ensure that the dates are accurate and align with the values outlined in your media plan.
It is advisable to refrain from establishing line items with flight dates shorter than two weeks. This is because the optimization model requires a learning or exploration period at the beginning of the campaign launch, which in turn allows it to acquire the most convertible traffic and reach the highest possible outcomes.
The duration of the learning period can range from 2 to 7 days, influenced by the campaign's objectives, setup, and any optional targets that may be specified.
Budget
It is essential to ensure that the total of the line items' budgets equals the campaign budget.
If the sum of the line items' budgets exceeds the campaign budget, spending will halt once the overall expenditure of the line items reaches the campaign budget limit.
Conversely, if the sum of the line items' budgets is less than the campaign budget, your campaign will not utilize its full budget.
Product selection
Selecting products within line item creation is used for attribution purposes.
Ensure that you have selected at least 10 unique products (not merely variations in size or colour of the same item). This variety is crucial for providing the optimization model with a sufficient range of products to fit the interests of the target users' audience. Additionally, it helps prevent scenarios where all chosen products may be out of stock while the campaign is ongoing.
When utilizing DCO creatives, we recommend selecting a minimum of 20 products for optimal results.
Targeting settings
You must select at least one country for geo-targeting.
The optimization model will benefit from accessing the widest possible audience, and narrowing of the available audience with too strict targeting settings can decrease the optimization efficiency.
In case you apply strict targeting settings, we strongly recommend you increase the size of the audience.
In case you have strict supply quality requirements we recommend you to apply the exclude lists of domains/app bundles, but avoid activating narrow allow lists.
When activating brand safety or IVT pre-bid services, it is advisable to concentrate on excluding high-risk categories that align with your brand's specific safety requirements. We suggest avoiding overly stringent lists of blocked categories, as this may lead to delivery issues and a decline in performance due to limited supply volumes.
CPM (click and complete video views optimisers)
Fees are incorporated into the target CPM, so please set your target accordingly:
Each retailer has a distinct audience fee, which can be a percentage of CPM (e.g., 25%) or a fixed CPM (e.g., $4).
Each vendor service also includes a CPM data fee.
When you specify your CPM, you can click on the View your CPM estimate button in the UI below the optional Max CPM input field to review the maximum effective CPM that your campaign will bid.
If the Max Bid CPM displayed in the pop-up is lower than $2.50 for the line item with display ads and lower than $3.50 for video ads, we recommend adjusting your target CPM to align with these guidelines.
Maximum CPO / Target ROAS (revenue and conversions optimiser)
You can set a target ROAS / maximum CPO, which is an optional input recommended only when reaching the specific minimal ROAS is specifically requested, as it may restrict budget delivery.