To maximize the effectiveness of your campaign and improve the reach of your campaign goals, Adform analyzes your campaign performance data and offers ways to optimize line item settings. You can adjust the following settings to improve line item delivery:
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Domains and apps: You can exclude underperforming entities and adjust bid multipliers. This way, you can increase or decrease the effectiveness of certain domains and apps.
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Schedule: You can exclude underperforming time slots.
Adform offers many tools to monitor your campaign and line item performance. You should consider optimizing your line item settings if you:
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Notice any underperforming line items in Campaign Overview.
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Identify any underperforming or well-performing domains and apps while using Adform reporting tools.
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See any underdelivering time slots (link to be added, not a part of this research) in line item schedule.
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Use a buying strategy that focuses on your primary KPI. You can then follow the suggested optimization options to optimize for secondary and tertiary KPIs as well and this way balance your campaign performance.
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Use a buying strategy that focuses on a certain KPI. While the algorithmic optimization works on each line item separately, you can also optimize domains and apps and schedule targeting optimizations that work by consolidating data from multiple line items. This way you can achieve better results faster.
There are two ways to optimize line item settings based on the campaign performance:
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You can use the assisted optimization and apply the optimization options provided by Adform that suggest the adjustments that could help you better reach your target KPIs.
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You can analyze the different performance metrics, decide on the optimization strategy yourself, and adjust the settings manually.
To understand how to apply the optimization options provided by Adform, get familiar with the six elements of this functionality.
To use the assisted optimization options for the selected programmatic line items, you need to select a KPI that you want to optimize for. The KPIs that you see here come from the campaign goals you defined on the order level. You can see both the target KPI value that you've defined and the value of actual line item delivery. This helps you to decide which KPI you want to focus the optimization on.
If you have multiple KPIs set, you must select only one KPI to optimize for. Adform will then offer optimization options to improve the reach of that specific KPI (other KPIs might be affected as well).
Adform offers optimization options for the domains and apps and the schedule of the selected programmatic line items. Read about the optimization options for these two settings below.
In the Domains & Apps section, you can choose one or more of the three optimization types:
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Remove lowest-performing domains and apps: Based on the optimization level you select, Adform removes a certain number of lowest-performing domains and apps (based on the optimization level) from the targeting setup.
If the lowest-performing domains and apps are in the Included domains & apps list of the inventory targeting setup, Adform removes them from that list. If there is no exact match in the Included domains & apps list, Adform adds those domains and apps to the Excluded domains & apps list.
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Adform only applies this optimization for the individual programmatic line item if it isn't reaching the KPI that you select to optimize for.
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Decrease bid multipliers for the lowest-performing domains and apps: Based on the optimization level you select, Adform decreases bid multiplier values for a certain number of lowest-performing domains and apps (based on the optimization level) by 20%. For example, if a lowest-performing domain has a bid multiplier value of 2, Adform updates it to 1.6.
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Adform only applies this optimization if the line item has domains and apps in the Included domains & apps list of the inventory targeting setup.
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Increase bid multipliers for highest-performing domains and apps: Based on the optimization level you select, Adform increases bid multipliers for a certain number of highest-performing domains and apps (based on the optimization level) by 20%. For example, if a highest-performing domain has a bid multiplier value of 2, Adform updates it to 2.4.
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Adform only applies this optimization if the line item has domains and apps in the Included domains & apps list.
For each optimization option, you also define the optimization level that determines the percentage of affected items (domains and apps, or time slots). There are three optimization levels:
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Safe: Optimize 10% of best- or worst-performing domains and apps, or time slots.
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Balanced: Optimize 15% of best- or worst-performing domains and apps.
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Aggressive: Optimize 20% of best- or worst-performing domains and apps.
Both Domains & Apps and Schedule sections have a visual representation of the change that Adform will apply based on the optimization types and optimization levels you selected.
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When you apply optimization for domains and apps, Adform presents a chart that shows the following information:
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Number of domains and apps that Adform will remove
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Number of domains and apps whose bid multiplier Adform will increase
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Number of domains and apps whose bid multiplier Adform will decrease
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Number of unaffected domains and apps
This helps to understand the effect of optimization on domains and apps targeting.
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When you apply optimizations for the schedule, Adform presents a chart that shows which time slots will be removed. Each time slot has a color that represents its performance in terms of reaching the KPI you selected to optimize for. On the right side of the chart, you can see the color scale that shows the colors and the corresponding KPI values. You can also hover over each time slot to see the exact delivery.
When you select the optimizations to apply (for both domains and apps, and schedule), the Affected KPIs widget shows the potential impact that the optimizations could have on the delivery of the programmatic line items.
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Adform calculates the potential impact by comparing the current KPI value with the KPI value that would be seen if the optimizations were applied for the selected period. It's not a forecast, but a recalculation of historical data, assuming that the line items were running with the optimization options that you selected.
Adform calculates the percentage difference and rounds up in 5% ranges.
You can check the collective impact of the optimization of both settings, or you can separate the impact of the domains and apps optimization and schedule optimization on each KPI.
If you don't want to use the assisted optimization and apply the optimization options that Adform provides, you can click and manually adjust the domains and apps that the line items are targeting, as well as the schedule. If you choose to optimize manually, the assisted optimization options that you selected won't be applied. You then move to a new side panel with domains and apps optimization or schedule optimization, where you can check the different performance metrics that are important to you and then make adjustments to exclude certain domains and apps, adjust their bid multipliers, or exclude certain time slots.
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For a detailed explanation how to access line item settings optimization and the procedures to follow for both assisted and manual optimizations, read Optimize Line Item Settings (not part of this research).
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