How to optimize banner (text/display) campaigns with logical flowchart

With the launch of OS Lion I started to transfer some files to my external and came across a flow chart on ‘how to optimize banner campaigns‘. I must admit I originally wrote this document 3 years ago at Lat49.com when writing specs to implement logical rules for their proprietary ad server engine. Lat49 is a mapcentric location-logic based ad serving solution for publishers with heavy map implementation and mobile app developers. The lat49 ad network consisted of 250 + publishers with over 200mm impressions.

Although 3 years old, the same logic can be applied to any campaign really (across any ad network or medium – facebook, bing, dfa/dfp, adwords, plentyoffish, etc). I will write the steps here and attach two docs for reference (excel + word doc). It’s important to note, these are very basic steps to improve and optimize online banner campaigns from the ad network publisher side. The steps are pretty much the same if you wish to optimize a campaign from the advertiser side.

You will have to use your noggin and review the publisher/media buy with creative, target audience, and demographic. It’s just sitting on my hard drive, hopefully this can help someone new to the adops or internet marketing space.

And with any campaign, you need to track conversions!!! For ad servers, use a pixel (1×1, spotlight, tracking pixel, conversion pixel), for media without pixel tracking use analytics tracking parameters (GA conversion tracking + Google Analytics URL Builder + Bit.ly if limited to url characters).

Instructions 1

Summary – Bad CTR, and running behind
Mission – Increase delivery, and improve click thru rate

We need to look at the daily max and budget and determine if we’re actually behind, on pace, or catching up. Campaigns that are slightly behind should use Instructions 2 – Bad CTR, delivery on pace. Only proceed with the following instructions if we’re far behind and aren’t reaching daily max.

We can’t optimize a campaign without inventory. Once we have the impressions, we have room to play with channels, time of day, frequency, publishers, creative, and landing pages.

-check hourly/daily max, is everything correct?
-can we extend delivery to 24 hours?
-does the frequency cap make sense?
-do we have the inventory available?
-what other campaigns are running in the same area/location/channel? Do those campaigns end soon? If so, will that release inventory for this campaign? Can we remove/pause the location from other campaigns (talk to other campaign manager for permission).
-can we add more publishers or channels? Refer to Insertion Order and advertiser before making changes
-can we extend map location or geo rules?
-do we have new publisher joining us with traffic in these areas?
-can we scale buy to meet expectations?
-can we use 3rd party ad servers to fulfill buy?

Instructions 2

Summary – Bad CTR, and delivery on pace
Mission – Improve click thru rate

We need to look at performance and figure out how quickly the budget is spent. If we’re burning through budget quickly, we might want to set lower frequency to reach more people. We might want to remove heavy publishers to allow distribution amongst other publishers for optimization data gathering. Here are some ideas to get you going:

Are there any clicks? If none (or a sudden decrease in clicks), ensure creative works and is counting clicks properly.
Run traffic summary report, determine and remove the worst performing channels, publishers, and creative. It’s important to view all publishers within a channel as the overall performance for the channel could be terrible, but certain publishers could hold strong CTR. Remove the channel, and add the best performing publishers to each campaign.
Review creative and call to action, does it make sense? Good copy, fonts, imagery, value proposition, etc..

Other options:
-Wait more time
-Consider asking client for new creative
-Consider drastically changing the targeted channels or publishers (advertiser approval)
-talk to advertiser, determine if creative is working on other ad networks/publishers

Instructions 3

Summary – Good CTR, and running behind
Mission – Improve delivery without damaging performance

We need to review the campaign settings and budget to determine how far behind we are. If we’re only slightly behind, we should only make small changes and possibly extend the campaign end date. If we’re really far behind, we might need to shrink buy with insert_your_publisher_name or drastically add locations and publishers. Here are some steps to get you going:

-check hourly/daily max, is everything correct?
-can we extend delivery to 24 hours?
-does the frequency cap make sense?
-do we have the inventory available?
-what other campaigns are running in the same area/location/channel? Do those campaigns end soon? If so, will that release inventory for this campaign? Can we remove the location from other campaigns (talk to other campaign manager for permission).
-can we add more publishers or channels? Refer to IO and advertiser before making changes
-can we extend map location or geo rules?
-can we extend campaign end date
-scale buy to meet client expectations, reduce media buy with insert_your_publisher_name
-seek new publishers/ad networks, dsp

Instructions 4

Summary – Good CTR, and delivering on pace
Mission – Improve performance and up sell customer

This is a great, happy, and warm place to be. We want all of our campaigns in this area at all times.

-Run a traffic summary report, can we improve the performance by removing poor performing channels or publishers?
-Contact Advertiser to up sell media buy
-Ask Advertiser for media buy (large brands or outstanding performance)
-Note possible reasons for campaign success, apply these key learnings to current and future campaigns

Instructions 5

Summary – Bad conversion rate, and running behind
Mission – Improve delivery, and improve conversion rate

How far behind is the campaign? If the campaign is slightly behind, you will want to read these instructions as well as Instructions 6 to make the best decisions from both sets of instructions (each campaign is slightly different, and will require creative solutions).

The fact a campaign is running behind is not the real issue, we need to get conversions!

Take a look at these two campaigns, they both have poor conversion rates and are running behind.

Example A – 100,000,000 impressions
Example B – 100,000 impressions

When reviewing both campaigns we should be aware of total impressions. If Campaign A has 40% budget complete and 50% time complete, we shouldn’t worry about the campaign delivering on pace – we should worry about the conversion rate! With 40% of the budget used (40,000,000 impressions) we have enough data to determine if the campaign is going to work. In this example we should focus on the conversion process, we’re seeing lots of clicks but no one is getting through the conversion process. Focus on why?

If Campaign B has 2% budget complete and 15% time complete, we shouldn’t worry about conversion rates – we should worry about increasing delivery to allow us to optimize and improve conversion rate. With 2% budget used (2,000 impressions), we don’t have enough data to determine if the campaign is going to work. In this example we should focus on delivery, and seek additional channels or publishers. Once we increase delivery, we can optimize the campaign.

-Do we have enough sample data? When was the campaign flighted?
-Review the campaign details and determine if enough impressions have been served to begin optimizing. After 50,000 impressions you should have a good sense of a good CTR and how many people usually convert from the clicks.
-Are there any conversions recorded? If not, ensure the pixel is implemented properly within the Lat49/insert_your_publisher_name dashboard and the confirmation page. If this checks out, review the landing page and booking form. Does the page render properly, can you access and complete the booking form?
-If we see conversions, we know the booking form and conversion pixels are working properly.

-Run a traffic summary report and determine what creative/publishers/channels are sending us the most conversions. We want to take a look at conversions over clicks and impressions. Remove poor performing segments.
Review product and purchase considerations against friction (are there too many fields in the booking form, spelling mistakes on page, copy contains swear words, etc)
-Talk to advertiser, is the conversion rate acceptable?
- Use A/B Testing on landing page, change creative, change value prop, seek other alternative including running creative on different channels or publishers (good creative with nice CTR but the quality of traffic is poor, we can run the same creative on a different publisher and drive quality traffic that will actually book)
-Consider waiting more time
-Consider ending contract with advertiser (campaign is not suitable for Lat49/insert_your_publisher_name)

If the campaign is REALLY far behind, we need to look at delivering settings and determine if we can increase delivery. Once we have ample delivery, we can start to remove poor performing channels, publishers, and creative.

Instructions 6

Summary – Bad conversion rate, and delivering on pace
Mission – Improve conversions, scale back if needed

Some campaigns and publishers require a time period for users to purchase the product, or sign up for more information. We need to be very careful when removing channels and publishers as some publishers may hold a low CTR but drive more conversions vs a site that drives tons of clicks without any conversion. Unfortunately with conversion tracking there are many variables that need to be considered before editing a campaign.

Example A – Campaign to drive newsletter signups are a direct response with users making a direct decision to sign up on the first visit. For this campaign we would not require a significant amount of time before removing channels/publishers/creative as users should make a direct response.

Example B – Campaign to purchase a television online is a potential lengthy process, where users will spend up to a few weeks researching a product before making a commitment.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when optimizing this set of campaigns:
-Do we have enough sample data? When was the campaign flighted?
-Review the campaign details and determine if enough impressions have been served to begin optimizing. After 50,000 impressions you should have a good sense of a good CTR and how many people usually convert from the clicks.
-Are there any conversions recorded? If not, ensure the pixel is implemented properly within the Lat49/insert_your_publisher_name dashboard and the confirmation page. If this checks out, review the landing page and booking form. Does the page render properly, can you access and complete the booking form?
-If we see conversions, we know the booking form and conversion pixels are working properly.
-Review campaign details, how quickly is the budget used?
-Run a traffic summary report and determine what creative/publishers/channels are sending us the most conversions. We want to take a look at conversions over clicks and impressions. Remove poor performing segments.
Review product and purchase considerations against friction (are there too many fields in the booking form, spelling mistakes on page, copy contains swear words, etc)
-Talk to advertiser, is the conversion rate acceptable?
- Use A/B Testing on landing page, change creative, change value prop, seek other alternative including running creative on different channels or publishers (good creative with nice CTR but the quality of traffic is poor, we can run the same creative on a different publisher and drive quality traffic that will actually convert/book)
-Consider waiting more time
-Consider ending contract with advertiser (campaign is not suitable for Lat49/insert_your_publisher_name)

Instructions 7

Summary – Good conversion rate, and running behind
Mission – Improve delivery, without damaging performance

Review campaign details and IO. Can we expand the area? Can we extend hourly delivery times? Can we add more publishers or channels?
Determine if other campaigns with the same target rules are ending soon, if so, we can deliver more impressions once those campaigns end.
Some additional ideas:
-Talk to Biz Dev for more publishers in this region
-Talk to advertiser, extend end dates, add more publishers, slightly reduce media buy with Lat49

Instructions 8

Summary – Good conversion rate, and delivering on pace
Mission – Improve conversion rate, up sell client

This is a great, happy, and warm place to be. We want all of our campaigns in this area at all times.

Here are some steps to help drive more conversions and ultimately a better conversion rate. It’s important to note, some campaigns and publishers require a time period for users to purchase the product, or sign up for more information. Before making changes to the campaign, ensure enough time has passed to capture user activity (example – don’t remove publishers on the first day of a campaign, or a publisher, or creative that has only served 1000 impressions).

-remove poor performing channels/publishers/creative (run traffic summary report, determine if a channel or publisher with enough impression data is dragging down performance)
-consider contacting advertiser/agency to increase media buy with Lat49/insert_your_publisher_name
-consider case study for strong brands and exceptional performance
-note the campaign details, and apply these practices to future campaigns with poor conversion rates

This might seem daunting at first, but if you review a campaign at the top of the flowchart and refer to the corresponding instructions, you should be good. As i mentioned above, this flowchart is really focused at optimizing campaigns at the publisher or ad network level. Most ad networks have ad serving logic to complete these tasks, but for heavy spends with large agencies you will always require manual review by a human (no matter what any developer says!!!)

Downloads:
Flowchart Diagram – Excel Format
Flowchart Instructions – Doc Format