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Create a campaign

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This page describes how to create a campaign to run on web inventory and on mobile apps. For instructions on creating a campaign to run on deals, see Create a Deal Campaign.

Creating campaign involves defining:

  • Media Budget - How much you are willing to spend on buying inventory (in dollars or impressions).

  • Buying Strategies - Whether you want to run the campaign on your own managed publishers (direct), on inventory from other networks and external supply sources (third-party), or on both. For third-party buys, you define exactly how you want to pay publishers and value bids.

  • Targeting - What specific inventory you want to run on, and how precisely you want to target users (via frequency, segments, geography, OS, etc.).

    Important

    Automatic archiving of objects: Campaigns that have not served or been edited in more than 180 days and that are not scheduled to serve in the future are automatically archived. If a campaign is in the "archived" state, it cannot spend or be edited. However, it can still be copied, deleted or used in reports (or exported for use in an external reporting tool). In addition, once an object is archived, any child objects it may own (e.g., Insertion Order > Line Item > Campaign) will also be archived and no additional child objects may be created beneath the archived parent object. For details, see Automatic Archiving of Buy-Side Objects.

Before you begin

  • Prerequisite - You have already created the line item under which you want to create your campaign. The line item defines your financial agreement with an advertiser, whereas the campaign specifies how to spend the money to make good on your agreement. See Create a Standard Line Item for more details.
  • Recommendations - If you plan to target user segments and/or domain lists, make sure the relevant segments and domain lists have been created before you start campaign setup. See Create a Segment Pixel and Working with Targeting Lists for more details.

Retargeting versus audience buying campaigns

Audience buying

Audience buying is a basic kind of campaign setup used by many buyers to target a specific segment of users. Audience buying campaigns are motivated by reaching a group of unique user IDs, designed to follow them around within the course of a browsing session. The assumption is that this group of unique user IDs will have a higher likelihood of engaging or clicking an ad, and drive more traffic to your advertiser's offer or website. This is a very commonly employed strategy for direct response campaigns. The segments used for this type of campaign are usually acquired in one of two ways:

  • Buying data segments from third-party data providers
  • Collecting your own data that is synced with Microsoft Advertising user IDs

The procedures outlined on this page do not describe the different methods for collecting data and assume that the buyer already has access to the data when the campaign is being setup. Audience buying campaigns feature a very simple setup and should have few restrictions on delivery outside of the segment target.

Important

One of the main reasons that Audience Buying campaigns fail to deliver is because the targeted segments contain too small a pool of users. Therefore, if this occurs, check segment loads. For third-party segments, traffickers will need to reach out to the third-party as Microsoft Advertising does not have access to this segment load information. Also, if your daily budget is less than $100, pacing may be affecting campaign delivery.

Retargeting

Retargeting campaigns are designed to drive users back to a website or product page. For example, if a user has visited the page for a shoe product, segmenting and retargeting this user on the exchange can help drive the user back to the product page to complete a purchase. Buyers employ this strategy to concentrate their buying on users they have deemed valuable. Retargeting is also a valuable strategy if you have a relationship with a premium publisher that sees high quality traffic. By segmenting the users that visit your publisher's web property, you have a valuable audience that you can retarget on third-party inventory. The general process can be broken into two distinct steps: 1. Collect users that visit a webpage (most likely will be that of a managed publisher) into a segment. 2. Target that segment in an audience-buying campaign.

The usual case involves placing a segment pixel on a publisher's page to collect users into that segment (e.g., using a piggyback pixel). Sometimes, advertisers will have access to visitors to a page and will push those audiences into the Microsoft Advertising seat. Retargeting involves working with publishers to collect users in a segment and then targeting that segment in a campaign. Just like audience buying, retargeting campaigns should have few restrictions on delivery outside of the segment target.

Important

If you are having delivery issues, first verify that the targeted segment contains users by viewing segment loads or reaching out to the third-party data provider. If your daily budget is less than $100, pacing may be affecting campaign delivery.

Setup procedure

The Advertisers screen should load by default when you log in to Monetize. If you are somewhere else in Monetize, click the Advertisers tab from the top navigation menu.

Step 1. Select the advertiser

Click the name of the advertiser under which you want to create a new campaign. This takes you to the Advertiser Details screen.

Step 2. Start a new campaign

On the Advertiser Details screen, click Create New > Campaign. The Create New > Campaign option can also be accessed from the insertion order, line item, and campaign screens under the advertiser. This opens the initial Create New Campaign screen.

Step 3. Select the parent line item

In the Select a Line Item section, select the line item under which you want to create your campaign and then click Continue. If you are creating your campaign directly from a line item or there is only one line item associated with the advertiser, the line item is selected by default.

Note

You can use the search field to find a particular line item by name or ID. Also, all active and inactive line items are listed by default, but you can use the filter to the right of the search field to show just active or inactive line items.

Step 4. Select the campaign type

In the Campaign Type section, select Buy direct/third-party inventory. This will reveal the full workflow for setting up a campaign. You can expand or collapse each section of the screen as you like. To expand or collapse all sections at once, click the Expand All or Collapse All link in the upper right.

Warning

Changing the campaign type will reset your workflow and available targeting options.

Step 5. Enter basic details and flight dates

In the Basic Setup section, enter the basic details and flight dates for the campaign.

  • Name - Enter the name for the campaign. You will later be able to search for and report on the campaign using this name.

  • External Code - If you want to report on the campaign using an external code (rather than the internal ID that Microsoft Advertising assigns automatically), enter the code here.

  • State - The state is set to "Inactive" by default to prevent the campaign from spending before all necessary settings and creatives are complete. You can set the state to "Active" at any time.

  • Flight Dates - Set the start for the campaign and set an end date or select Run Indefinitely. Note that the time format (12-hour or 24-hour) and time zone are inherited from the advertiser. Enter or select the start and end dates and times for the campaign.

    Important

    If flight dates are set for the parent line item, those dates take precedence; regardless of the dates set for the campaign, the campaign will not start before the line item start date and will not continue buying impressions after the line item end date.

    Tip

    To further limit serving to specific days and hours of the week, you can use Daypart Targeting.

Step 6. Set the campaign budget

By default, your campaign media Budget is unlimited. If you prefer, you can define exactly how much you are willing to spend on buying inventory for the campaign. The budget can be in impressions or in media cost (dollars). Note that media cost is in USD rather than the advertiser's currency because USD is the currency in which Microsoft Advertising transacts.

Important

You can set budgets at the insertion order and line item levels as well. Budgets at these levels take precedence over a child campaign's budget; if they run out, the campaign will stop buying impressions, whether or not it has reached its own budget. For more details about budgeting and best practices, see Budgeting and Pacing.

  • Lifetime - This is the budget that you are willing to spend over the entire lifetime of the campaign. There are two options:

    • Custom - Select this option to enter a specific amount of impressions or dollars.
    • Unlimited - Select this option to leave your lifetime budget undefined.

    Note

    If Lifetime budget is set to Unlimited and the line item and insertion order lifetime budgets are also set to Unlimited, severe overspend can occur.

  • Daily - This is the budget that you are willing to spend on any single day. There are three options:

    • Custom - Select this option to enter a specific amount of impressions or dollars. When you enter a custom daily budget, you must select one of the following options:
    • Pace evenly throughout the day - Select this option, otherwise known as "daily pacing", if you want to prevent your daily budget from being spent all at once by distributing your spend evenly by hour throughout the day. Note that if you use Daypart Targeting to restrict the hours during which the campaign can serve, daily pacing will adjust to distribute your spend evenly across only the targeted hours. For more details, see Daypart Targeting or Daily Pacing.
    • Spend as fast as possible - Select this option if you do not want to pace your daily budget at all. Note that this option could lead to your entire daily budget being spent in a very short amount of time.

  • Pace Lifetime Budget - Select this option to spread your lifetime budget evenly across your flight dates. As each day passes, the system spreads the remaining impression or media cost budget across the remaining days of the flight.

    • The system is not able to pace its spending if it does not have a budget amount, and the system must know the number of days in the campaign in order to apply the remaining budget amount equally for the remainder of the flight. Therefore, this option requires that you enter a custom lifetime budget and select an end date. For more details, examples, and best practices, see Lifetime Pacing.

  • Unlimited - Select this option to leave your daily budget undefined.

    Note

    If you have enabled the unlimited budget warning feature, you will not be able to set the budget for your campaign to unlimited if the line item and (if applicable) insertion order budgets are also set to unlimited. This feature prevents mistaken overspend that can result when budgets are set to unlimited at all levels. When the feature is enabled, to set your campaign budget to unlimited, you must first limit the budget for either the insertion order or line item associated with the campaign.

    To enable this feature, speak to your Microsoft Advertising representative.

Step 7. Define the buying strategies

In the Buying Strategies section, choose whether you want to buy direct inventory, third-party inventory, or both. Direct inventory includes only inventory managed by your network, whereas third-party inventory includes all inventory not managed by your network that has been enabled for reselling (including external supply partners such as Microsoft Advertising Exchange and Google Ad Manager).

Buy Direct Inventory

To run the campaign on your own managed publishers or direct buys, check the Buy Direct Inventory box. Then weight the campaign against other direct campaigns and, if applicable, enable roadblocking.

  • Campaign Priority - Since you have already paid for direct inventory, there is no need to input a buying strategy, but you can select a priority to weight the campaign against other direct campaigns within your account.The campaign with the highest priority will always win, even if a lower priority campaign bids more. For more information about managing priority, see Bidding Priority.

    Tip

    By default, campaign priority is 5. If you leave this default for all of your direct campaigns, no campaign will be given precedence over any other. As soon as you change the priority in one of your direct campaigns, however, ALL of your eligible campaigns are potentially impacted.

  • Enable Roadblocking - In cases where your managed publishers are using Microsoft Advertising's Seller Tag (AST) to conduct a single auction for multiple ad slots on a page, you can serve multiple linked creatives in response, also known as roadblocking. If a roadblock campaign is eligible, the campaign priority is effectively 11. There are three possible types of roadblocks:

    • Normal Roadblock - The number of creatives is greater than or equal to the number of ad slots.
    • Partial Roadblock - One creative for each size must be eligible to serve on the page. All creatives will serve if ad slots are available. If more than one creative per size exists, creative will rotate through a single slot.
    • Exact Match - The number of creatives is exactly equal to the number of ad slots.

    Important

    Roadblocking

    Roadblocking is only available for campaigns buying exclusively direct inventory and which are not associated with a parent line item that has its booked revenue set to "CPC" or "CPA". Also, the partial and exact roadblocking options are available only to some clients. For more details, please see Target Your Inventory with Roadblocking.

    Note

    If roadblocking has been set at the line item level, it's not available on the campaign.

Buy Third-Party Inventory

To run the campaign on inventory from other members of the Microsoft Advertising platform and from external partners and exchanges, check the Buy Third-Party Inventory box. Then decide how you want to pay for third-party inventory (per impression, per click, and/or per conversion) and define exactly how you want to calculate your bids. Note that the revenue type of the parent line item determines which buying strategy options are available and, of those available, which are recommended. For a detailed explanation of your options, see Buying Strategies.

Warning

Mobile Conversion Tracking

  • Post-view conversions cannot currently be tracked across Safari mobile browsers or in apps. If you use the "Optimize to a predicted CPA goal" strategy, please do so only for post-click scenarios. For more information about why this is so, see Technical Limitations of Mobile Buying.
  • Post-click conversion tracking works in mobile browsers just like it does in web browsers. In mobile apps, however, post-click conversions can be tracked only when the user performs the action (the conversion) from an app's built-in web view. After clicking an ad in an app, if the user converts in a separate mobile browser (after having closed the app), the correlation to the click in the app cannot be tracked.

Note

  • When your line item booked revenue is CPM but you want your campaign to optimize to a CPC or CPA goal, for best results, set a Performance Goal on your line item and use Optimize to a % Margin of Booked Revenue as your campaign buying strategy.
  • For more information, please see Using Performance Goals with CPM Booked Revenue.
  • To learn about setting up Performance Goals on the line item, see Step 6 of Create a Standard Line Item.

  • Pay on a Per-impression (CPM) basis - Select this option to pay publishers for every impression. This payment type is accepted by all sellers (Microsoft Advertising sellers and external sellers)

    • Optimize to a % margin of booked revenue - Use this strategy to bid a % margin of the revenue that the advertiser pays you. For example, if your booked revenue is $1 CPM, and you set a bidding strategy margin of 25%, your campaign will bid $0.75. If your booked revenue type is a CPA or CPC goal, it will apply your desired margin and optimize to that predicted goal.

      • Bid CPM: max $_ CPM min $_ CPM - Enter the highest and lowest CPM dollar amount that you are willing to spend on an impression.
      • Enable Cadence Modifier - Under OTHER OPTIONS, check this box to vary your bid based on how often and recently users have seen your creatives. This feature is based on the idea that an ad is more effective (and therefore worth more) when a user hasn't seen it before or hasn't seen it many times or seen it recently. For more details, see Cadence Modifier and the Chaos Factor.

    • Optimize to a predicted CPA goal - Use this strategy to vary bids based on the likelihood of an attributed conversion for each piece of inventory. This strategy uses the Microsoft Advertising optimization engine.

      • Bid $_ post-click/post-view CPA - Select the conversion pixel to which you want to optimize and enter the dollar amount per conversion that you want the optimization engine to aim for.

      • Learn Budget - The learn budget is the portion of your campaign budget that you want to commit to optimizing your campaign, which helps you quickly find slices of third-party inventory that provide a positive ROI. The first phase of this process is called Learn. You can set a lifetime learn budget of up to 100% of the campaign budget as well as a daily cap for learning. For more information about optimization and learning, see Targeted Learn.

      • Bid at most $_ CPM in Learn Phase - When your campaign starts to spend on new inventory, the optimization engine submits "learn" bids. If necessary, enter max CPM dollar amount for these bids.

        Note

        When you set both a cap for learn bids and a max CPM for non-learn bids (next option), the lower of the two will be used for learn.

      • Bid CPM: max $_ CPM min $_ CPM - Enter the highest and lowest CPM dollar amount that you are willing to spend on an impression.

      • Enable Cadence Modifier - This option appears under OTHER OPTIONS and cannot be deselected. When optimizing to a predicted CPA goal, your bids will always vary based on how often and recently users have seen your creatives. This feature is based on the idea that an ad is more effective (and therefore worth more) when a user hasn't seen it before or hasn't seen it many times or seen it recently. For more details, see Cadence Modifier and the Chaos Factor.

    • Optimize to a predicted CPC goal - Use this strategy to vary bids based on the likelihood of a click for each piece of inventory. This strategy uses the Microsoft Advertising optimization engine.

      • Optimize to $_ per click - Enter the dollar amount per click that you want the optimization engine to aim for when calculating bids.

      • Learn Budget - The learn budget is the portion of your campaign budget that you want to commit to optimizing your campaign, which helps you quickly find slices of third-party inventory that provide a positive ROI. The first phase of this process is called Learn. You can set a lifetime learn budget of up to 100% of the campaign budget as well as a daily cap for learning. For more information about optimization and learning, see Targeted Learn.

      • Bid at most $_ CPM in Learn Phase - When your campaign starts to spend on new inventory, the optimization engine submits "learn" bids. It is recommended to enter a max CPM dollar about for these bids. In doing so, you will avoid learning on inventory that is too expensive while not limiting yourself from optimized inventory sources that are worth higher prices. For more details and suggestion for using this feature, see Max Learn CPM.

        Note

        When you set both a cap for learn bids and a max CPM for non-learn bids (next option), the lower of the two will be used for learn.

    • Bid CPM: max $_ CPM min $_ CPM - Enter the highest and lowest CPM dollar amount that you are willing to spend on an impression.

    • Enable Cadence Modifier - This option appears under OTHER OPTIONS and cannot be deselected. When optimizing to a predicted CPA goal, your bids will always vary based on how often and recently users have seen your creatives. This feature is based on the idea that an ad is more effective (and therefore worth more) when a user hasn't seen it before or hasn't seen it many times or seen it recently. For more details, see Cadence Modifier and the Chaos Factor.

  • Bid a base $_ CPM - Use this strategy to bid a fixed dollar amount.

    • Base CPM $__ - Enter the fixed dollar amount to bid per thousand impressions.

    • Enable Cadence Modifier - This option appears under OTHER OPTIONS and cannot be deselected. When optimizing to a predicted CPA goal, your bids will always vary based on how often and recently users have seen your creatives. This feature is based on the idea that an ad is more effective (and therefore worth more) when a user hasn't seen it before or hasn't seen it many times or seen it recently. For more details, see Cadence Modifier and the Chaos Factor.

    • Bid CPM: max $_CPM min $_ CPM - This option is available under OTHER OPTIONS only once you enable Cadence Modifier. Enter the highest and lowest CPM dollar amount that you are willing to spend on an impression.

    • Target reach and delivery - Use this strategy to bid the going platform rate for each piece of inventory.

      • Auto-bid to win most platform impressions (ECP) - Select this option to bid an estimate of the price that is likely to win most impressions from Microsoft Advertising platform sellers based on historical bids and their success or failure. Since off-platform sellers (e.g., Google Ad Manager, Rubicon, etc.) conduct a secondary auction, bidding ECP does not necessarily ensure winning off-platform impressions.
      • Auto-bid to win ~50% of platform impressions (EAP) - Select this option to bid an estimate of the price that is likely to win about half of the impressions from Microsoft Advertising platform sellers based on historical bids and their success or failure. Since off-platform sellers (e.g., Google Ad Manager, Rubicon, etc.) conduct a secondary auction, bidding EAP does not necessarily ensure winning half of off-platform impressions.
      • Bid CPM: max $_ CPM min $_ CPM - Enter the highest and lowest CPM dollar amount that you are willing to spend on an impression.
      • Enable Cadence Modifier - Under OTHER OPTIONS, check this box to vary your bid based on how often and recently users have seen your creatives. This feature is based on the idea that an ad is more effective (and therefore worth more) when a user hasn't seen it before or hasn't seen it many times or seen it recently. For more details, see Cadence Modifier and the Chaos Factor.

      Note

      If minimum margin is set on the line item, this will ensure campaigns will bid at or below the minimum margin %. This setting effectively sets a bid cap on your third-party campaigns.

      The ability to combine CPM booked revenue with either the Pay on a Per-click (CPC) Basis or the Pay on a Per-conversion (CPA) Basis buying strategies is being deprecated soon. Although this combination will remain functional for existing campaigns, you will no longer be able to use this combination on new campaigns or duplicate existing campaigns that use it. For best results, set a Performance Goal on your line item and use Optimize to a % Margin of Booked Revenue as your campaign buying strategy.

Step 8. Show to users without cookies

To target users that you have not seen before and users who have cleared their cookies, check the Show to users without cookies box under Buying Strategies > OTHER OPTIONS.

Tip

If using frequency targeting for this campaign, you must also check the Show to users without cookies box in the Frequency section of the Targeting area. For more details, see Frequency Targeting.

Your campaign will show ads to users without cookies by default except when conversion tracking is enabled at the line item level (one or more conversion pixels are attached to the line item). In this case, targeting users without cookies is not the default because we cannot attribute conversions back to an impression view or click when users do not have cookies.

Important

Cookieless Users on Mobile Devices

  • Targeting cookieless user does not affect mobile app targeting. Almost all in-app inventory has a device ID associated with it; this device ID is then associated with a cookie from Microsoft Advertising.
  • For mobile web campaigns, checking Show to users without cookies is currently the only way to serve ads to Safari users, since Safari disables third-party (advertising) cookies by default.

Step 9. Set optimization levers

If your buying strategy uses the Microsoft Advertising optimization engine, you can adjust Optimization Levers to influence how optimization works for your campaign, for example, how much you bid during the Learn phase, how many success events (clicks or conversions) it takes to move from the Learn phase to the Optimized phase, as well as whether you want to optimize to the campaign bidding strategy before optimizing to the line item booked revenue.

To access optimization levers, click the Edit button under Buying Strategies > OTHER OPTIONS. For detailed explanations of each lever, see Optimization Levers.

Important

If you do not have access to optimization levers and are interested in learning more about about them, please contact your Microsoft Advertising account representative.

Step 10. Add targeting

In the Targeting section, you can Apply a Targeting Template or set unique inventory and user targeting for this campaign. Use the links below to learn more about each type of targeting.

Note

Boolean Logic

When you apply multiple types of targeting (e.g., inventory, segment, geography, etc.), keep in mind that your campaign will buy only impressions that match all targeting. In other words, there is an AND relationship between the main types of targeting. For example, if you target seller 123, segment ABC, and the United States, your campaign will bid only on impressions from that seller being viewed by users in that segment and in the United States.

Target inventory

You can target inventory in numerous ways. Use the links below to learn more about each type of inventory targeting.

Target users

You can target users in numerous ways. Use the links below to learn more about each type of user targeting.

Step 11. Associate creatives and define a dynamic landing page

In the Associated Creatives section, you can select a Creative Rotation to determine how you want to rotate and weight multiple creatives. Select one of three options: - Evenly weight creatives (default): Even rotation is handled automatically by our system. - Auto-optimize creative weight: When this option is chosen, 75% of delivery is allocated to the creative with the highest click-through rate; all remaining creatives of the same size receive equal allocations of the remaining 25% of overall delivery. - Manually weight creatives: By selecting this option, you will be able to manually set a weight (between 0 and 1000).

See Creative Rotation for more information.

Click Edit and select the creatives that you want to run for the campaign. Also, if you want to define a dynamic landing page to be used by multiple creatives associated to the campaign, enter the Landing Page URL and then make sure the creatives are set up to use a dynamic landing page. Note that you can set a dynamic landing page at the line item level as well. For more details, see Dynamic Landing Pages.

Tip

If you prefer, you can associate creatives to the campaign at a later time. For more details, see Associate Creatives to Campaigns.

Step 12. Enter comments

In the Comments section, enter any comments that you would like to record with the campaign. Comments are for your reference only and will not affect campaign delivery.

Step 13. Add serving fees

If you owe serving fees to third parties for services such as creative hosting or user data, you can add these fees in the Serving Fees section. Serving fees can be either a percentage of costs or a flat CPM.

Please note the following:

  • Serving fees are added to your media cost.
  • When you use a third-party buying strategy that involves optimization ("Optimize to a predicted CPA/CPC goal" or "Optimize to a % margin of booked revenue"), bids are automatically reduced to account for serving fees.
  • When you buy direct inventory or use a third-party buying strategy that does not involve optimization, bids are not reduced to account for serving fees.

To add a new serving fee:

  1. Click the Add Fee button.

  2. In the Broker field, select the relevant broker or create a new broker.

  3. In the Description field, enter details about the serving fee.

  4. Select the Fee Type (CPM or Cost Share) and enter the relevant Fee Value (dollar amount for CPM, percentage for Revenue Share).

  5. Click Add.

    Important

    Per broker, you can add no more than one CPM serving fee and one Cost Share serving fee.

Step 14. Review and save your campaign

Confirm that the campaign details are correct and then click the Save button to finish adding the campaign to Microsoft Advertising. The campaign is then added to the list of campaigns on the Explore Campaigns.

Step 15. Complete peer approval

Tip

When activated for a user at the network level, the campaign peer approval feature requires a user to get approval from a second user before campaigns can be set to Active. This feature minimizes the risk of user-side errors in campaign activation and can help users identify and change settings to improve campaign performance.

Note

This step applies only to clients who have enabled the peer approval feature for their users. To learn more about enabling peer approval for users, see Create a Network User.

The campaign peer approval feature sets requirements for who must obtain peer approval, but not who can approve campaigns. Any other user who is able to create campaigns for your network may provide this approval. There is no way to designate a single approver of others' campaigns.

If your campaigns use the peer approval feature, in order to switch a campaign's status from Inactive to Active, you will need peer approval from another user. In the Create New Campaign screen in the Approved By field, you will see a message alerting you to the need for peer approval and will be unable to save the campaign in an active state.

To approve the campaign, another user from your team must log in, go to the Campaigns screen, select the desired campaign and click Edit. This will open the Edit Campaign screen. On the Edit Campaign screen, the alternate user must check the Approved By checkbox. Once this step is completed, the campaign can be set to Active by any user on your team.

Next steps

Once you've created a campaign, you can View Campaign Details. You can also continue Associate Creatives to Campaigns.