LEVERAGE OUR TEAM

Flexible Partnership
Let us build and optimize campaign performance for you or with you. We want to be an extension of your team and fit into your day to day operation where needed.

Below are steps taken to ensure campaign builds are set up for success.

Min

Brand Safety

Applying brand safety tools to protect your brand from unwanted content, imagess, videos, etc.

Audience Segments

Choose from over 100+ data providers to find your in-market audience in

real-time.

Anti-Fraud

Using the best in market IVH (invalid human) tools, to ensure your ads are reaching real people.

Bidding Efficiency

Ensure we are bidding at a rate that achieves both quality inventory and the ability to deliver to your audience.

Creative Auditing

Make sure ads are IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) ready, so we have no delays in campaign launches.

Targeting Set-Up

Audience profiles and targeting strategy being built strategically.

Frequency & Recency

Decide both how often and for how long your potential customers sees your brand.

In-House Pre-Bid Segments

Optimize towards ads that are being viewed the longest.

Campaign Building: Further Breakdown for Steps to Success

Campaign building is a multi-step process that requires careful planning, execution, and continuous monitoring to ensure the success of digital advertising campaigns. The trafficking team plays a crucial role in ensuring that each campaign is set up correctly, optimized for the desired outcomes, and adheres to all necessary guidelines and standards. Below, we’ll walk through the essential steps and processes involved in building out a campaign, ensuring success across all stages.

1. Define Campaign Objectives

Before any technical steps are taken, it’s crucial to define what the campaign aims to achieve. Whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or driving direct sales, knowing the goals will guide every decision during the campaign creation process. This can include specific KPIs like:

Impressions
Click-through rates (CTR)
Conversions
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Once the objectives are clearly defined, the trafficking team can create a tailored approach for targeting, creatives, bidding, and measurement.

2. Audience Segmentation & Targeting Setup

Targeting setup is one of the most crucial elements in campaign building. It ensures that the ads reach the right people at the right time. Here’s how it’s done:

Audience Data Segments:

Behavioral Targeting: Targeting based on past behaviors like website visits, purchases, or browsing patterns.
Demographic Targeting: Segmenting audiences based on age, gender, income, and other demographic factors.
Geo-Targeting: Delivering ads based on location (country, region, city, or even specific lat/long coordinates).

In-House Pre-Bid Segments: Some advertisers or agencies may create in-house audience segments based on their own data (e.g., CRM data, site activity, purchase history). These segments can be leveraged to ensure ads are served to the most relevant audiences based on first-party data.

Targeting Setup Based on Audience Profiles: The trafficking team sets up precise targeting for the campaign using various segmentation strategies. This can include targeting specific interest categories (e.g., sports, technology), contextual targeting (matching ads to relevant content), and more. The profiles are crafted to ensure that the ads resonate with the target audience.

3. Creative Auditing

Creatives are the face of any campaign, and ensuring they are compliant with technical requirements and brand guidelines is vital.

File Size and Format: Verifying that the creative meets the platform’s specifications (e.g., banner ads, video ads, or interactive ads).
Brand Consistency: Ensuring that all creatives align with the brand’s messaging, tone, and visual identity.
Mobile Optimization: Ensuring creatives are optimized for different devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) and browsers.
Creative Approval: Checking that creatives are pre-approved by the client or brand before trafficking.

Creative auditing ensures that the ad experience is not only effective but also meets all platform, device, and brand standards.

4. Brand Safety

Brand safety ensures that your ads are not shown in places where they could harm your brand’s reputation or contradict your brand’s values.

Brand Safety Measures Include:

Avoiding Inappropriate Content: Preventing ads from appearing on websites or alongside content that includes violence, adult content, hate speech, or illegal activities.
Contextual Targeting: Ensuring that ads appear only within the context of appropriate content categories (e.g., sports, lifestyle, news).
Blocking Certain Websites: Using blacklists or pre-bid segments to block sites that may have a negative association with the brand.

Tools: There are tools available to scan websites for harmful or inappropriate content and block those platforms from receiving ads. Brand safety tools like DoubleVerify or Integral Ad Science (IAS) are often integrated into platforms to provide these filters.

5. Anti-Fraud Measures

Anti-fraud is critical for ensuring that the campaign’s ad spend isn’t wasted on fake or fraudulent traffic. Some key anti-fraud measures include:

Traffic Quality: Ensuring that traffic comes from legitimate sources (e.g., no bots or click farms).
Viewability Metrics: Making sure the ad was actually seen by real users, rather than just served in a hidden iframe or background.
Click Fraud Protection: Using tools that detect and prevent click fraud (e.g., users or bots repeatedly clicking on ads with no intention of conversion).
Geo-Fraud Prevention: Ensuring that users are in the correct region and targeting areas based on IP location or mobile GPS data.

Tools Used: Fraud detection solutions like White Ops, Forensiq, and DoubleVerify can be used to identify and block fraudulent impressions, clicks, or traffic.

6. Frequency and Recency Management

Frequency and recency control is about managing how often and when your audience sees your ads to avoid over-exposure or ad fatigue.

Frequency Capping: Setting a limit on how many times an individual user will see the same ad in a certain timeframe (e.g., no more than 3 times per day). This helps to avoid overwhelming users with the same message.
Recency Control: Ensuring that ads are shown to users shortly after they've interacted with your brand, creating a more timely and relevant experience. For instance, users who interacted with a product page in the past 24 hours might be retargeted with an ad for the product.

The goal is to maintain the optimal balance between sufficient exposure to the message without annoying or alienating users.

7. Bidding Efficiency & Inventory Quality

Bidding efficiency refers to how effectively an advertiser spends their budget to win bids on high-quality inventory at the best possible rate.

Bid Strategy: Using cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPM), or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) to determine the best way to bid for ad inventory.
Optimizing Based on Quality: The trafficking team ensures that the ads are placed on high-quality inventory that matches the desired targeting. Ads on premium inventory may cost more, but the ROI can be higher due to more qualified users.
Auction Participation: Evaluating inventory across multiple ad exchanges and networks (e.g., Google Exchange, OpenX, The Trade Desk) to ensure that bids are competitive while securing the best placements.

Bid strategy and inventory quality optimization ensure that advertisers aren’t overpaying for low-quality impressions.

8. Campaign Tracking and Measurement

The trafficking team also ensures that the right tracking mechanisms are in place to measure the performance of the campaign accurately.

Tracking Pixels: Implementing tracking pixels (for conversion tracking) to gather data on actions users take after seeing an ad (e.g., purchase, sign-up, click).
Attribution Models: Using models like last-click, first-click, or linear attribution to determine how the campaign contributes to the overall marketing funnel.
Performance Analytics: Using platforms like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or DSP-specific analytics tools to measure KPIs and make optimizations in real-time.

The campaign trafficking team plays a pivotal role in building, managing, and optimizing campaigns across digital channels. From audience segmentation and creative auditing to ensuring brand safety and anti-fraud measures, every step is taken to maximize campaign performance. Through frequent monitoring, adjusting bids, and optimizing creatives, the trafficking team ensures that campaigns are set up for success while delivering high-quality impressions that align with the brand’s objectives and target audience.

Below are strategies we use to maintain and improve campaign performance.

Domain Blocking

Pulling daily domain reports to ensure ads are being served on high quality domains.

Ad Units

Looking at creative size to see which ads are receiving the most tractions to make better A/B testing decisions.

Ad Placements

Analyze domains to find which domains give us best value for the ad placement.

Location

How are your ads performing by Country, State, DMA, City, and Zip?

Viewability %

Ensure your ads are getting seen by remaining above the fold as much as possible.

Audience

See which audience profile is showing interest in your brand, company, and advertisement.

Frequency Caps

Determine how often your potential customer should see your ad on a both a daily basis and in a lifetime.

Engagement

What KPIs should we be looking at for your campaign? Choose from powerful reporting access.

Campaign Optimizations: A Detailed Breakdown

Our team works to optimize campaigns in real-time, maximizing return on investment (ROI) through data-driven decision-making. To make sure you're fully leveraging technology and tools, it's essential to optimize your campaigns across a variety of factors, including creative performance, geo-location, audience data, device performance, and more.

1. Creative Performance Optimization

Creative optimization is key in driving better engagement and conversions. The first step is often A/B testing to see which creatives perform better. However, there are other factors involved as well.

Creative Size: Different ad sizes perform better in different environments. For instance, larger ad formats like 970x250 (Billboard) may perform better in premium placements or for brand awareness campaigns, while smaller ad formats like 300x250 (Medium Rectangle) are great for conversion-focused campaigns due to their versatility.

Example:
- A/B Testing with Creative Size: Let’s say you're testing a 300x250 and a 320x50 banner. The 300x250 might be more visible on desktop placements (above the fold) and generate more clicks, while the 320x50 might work better on mobile, where space is limited but the ad fits the screen better. Testing these two can show which size performs better for each device.
Creative Rotation: Test multiple versions of creatives with different messaging, visuals, or calls-to-action (CTAs) to understand what drives higher engagement.

2. Geo-Location Performance

Optimizing campaigns based on geo-location is important for targeting the right audience in the right place. By leveraging IP targeting and geo-fencing, advertisers can serve specific creatives tailored to a user’s location.

Example:
- In a local event promotion campaign, ads can be served to users in a particular city or region that are attending the event. Geo-location performance analysis would help understand which locations yield the highest engagement or conversions.
- A campaign targeting people in the U.S. might perform differently compared to one targeting Europe, as audience behavior, language, and interests vary by region.

3. Audience Data Performance

Using first-party and third-party data segments to define your target audience helps you deliver the most relevant ads to the right people. Programmatic platforms allow you to use rich audience data, such as demographics, behavior, interests, or even past purchase behavior.

First-Party Data: This is data collected directly from your website, mobile app, or CRM (e.g., email lists). It is highly valuable as it's coming from users who have already shown interest in your brand.
- Example: A travel brand can use first-party data to retarget users who have previously browsed specific destinations or flights.
Third-Party Data: This is data purchased from external providers, which can help you target specific audience segments beyond your website's visitors. For example, demographic segments (age, gender) or interest-based segments (e.g., sports fans, tech enthusiasts).
- Example: A retailer might buy third-party data on people interested in fashion to target ads for a new clothing line.

4. Site Domain, Publisher, and Exchange Performance

Understanding how your ads are performing on different publishers and ad exchanges can provide valuable insights into where to allocate your budget more effectively.

Publisher Performance: Certain publishers (websites or apps) may generate higher engagement rates than others. Analyzing this helps you adjust bids and reallocate spend.
- Example: If you find that your ads perform much better on Publisher A (a news site) compared to Publisher B (a blog), you may want to shift more budget to Publisher A for higher performance.
Exchange Performance: Different ad exchanges offer different inventory types, which can affect pricing and competition. Tracking performance across exchanges allows you to adjust where you buy inventory.
- Example: If you’re bidding on the same inventory across Google AdX and Rubicon Project, but you see higher ROI from Google AdX, then you can adjust your buying strategy accordingly.

5. Device Performance

Optimizing for device performance involves analyzing how your ads perform across different operating systems, browsers, and device types (desktop, mobile, tablet).

Operating System: Ads might perform differently across iOS, Android, and Windows operating systems due to varying user behaviors and compatibility.
- Example: A campaign targeting mobile app downloads might see different performance on iOS versus Android, due to platform-specific factors (e.g., different app store behaviors).
Browser: Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have different performance characteristics due to browser settings, ad blockers, and how they render ads.
- Example: Ads on Safari may perform worse because many users have stronger privacy settings and ad-blocking features enabled compared to Chrome.
Device Type: Understanding whether users are engaging with your ads on desktop, mobile, or tablet devices helps optimize for the right format and device-appropriate creatives.
- Example: A 300x250 ad might be ideal for a desktop, but a 320x50 might be more appropriate for mobile users who are likely to be on the go.

6. Frequency and Recency Caps

Frequency caps and recency caps help optimize your ad delivery to avoid overexposure or underexposure.

Frequency Caps: Limit how many times a user is shown the same ad over a specific period. This prevents ad fatigue and ensures you're not wasting your budget showing the same ad too many times.
- Example: If you set a frequency cap of 3 per day, the user will only see the same ad three times within 24 hours, ensuring your ad spend is more effective.
Recency Caps: Control how long after a user visits your site that they can see your retargeted ads. This ensures you are not targeting users who are no longer relevant.
- Example: If a user hasn’t visited your website in 7 days, you can stop retargeting them to avoid wasting budget on cold leads.

7. Viewability and Ad Placement

Viewability measures the percentage of an ad that was actually seen by users. It's crucial because an ad can be served, but if it isn't viewed, it doesn't deliver value.

Above the Fold vs. Below the Fold: Ads placed above the fold (visible without scrolling) typically perform better than those placed below the fold. Ads below the fold have lower visibility and can be skipped if users don’t scroll far enough down the page.
- Example: If you place a 300x250 ad above the fold, it will likely have higher viewability than the same ad placed below the fold, which may not even be seen by users.
Viewability %: Aim for a viewability rate of at least 50-70%. Poor viewability can indicate suboptimal placement, ad design, or issues with your chosen inventory.
- Example: If a campaign has a low view-ability rate, you may want to reevaluate where the ad is placed, how it’s designed, or whether you’re targeting the right websites or apps.

8. Bid Rate and Impact of World Events

Bid rates in programmatic advertising can fluctuate due to several factors, including world events, seasonality, or real-time demand.

Example:
- During events like the Super Bowl or the Oscars, media inventory gets more expensive as demand increases due to heightened interest and more competition among advertisers. Ads during these events will cost more due to the larger audience and higher traffic, so you may need to adjust your bid rate to stay competitive.
- Another example is Black Friday or Cyber Monday, where demand for e-commerce inventory is exceptionally high, leading to increased bid rates. In these cases, you may need to raise your bids to secure ad space, but it's also essential to ensure your creatives are relevant to the shopping season.

Optimizing programmatic advertising campaigns is a continuous process that involves careful monitoring and adjustment across several dimensions. By focusing on creative performance, geo-location targeting, audience data, device performance, and bid management, you can ensure that your campaigns deliver maximum ROI.

The key takeaway is that data analysis and real-time adjustments are fundamental in optimizing programmatic campaigns. Whether you’re optimizing for viewability, frequency capping, or bid rates, each optimization element plays a vital role in improving performance and increasing the effectiveness of your ad spend.