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Campaigns overview
Campaigns are the individual marketing strategies that define how you’ll serve ads, when those ads will be served, and where they’ll be placed. They contain a set of targeting parameters, an ad format and versions, bidding strategies, and any other targeting settings that you specify. You’ll set these parameters at the start of a campaign and adjust them throughout its flight to optimize performance.
Note that, as naming conventions for campaigns can differ across demand-side platforms (DSPs), you may also see campaigns referred to as flights, ad groups, or line items.
Campaigns versus insertion orders (IOs)
While campaigns include individual strategies, IOs function as an organizational framework. They’re the parent hierarchy that houses a set of campaigns, which you can oversee and manage individually or as a group.
The majority of your parameters and settings are defined at the campaign level. Certain settings–such as scheduling and budgets–can be set at the IO level. We also recommend reporting at the IO level to gain a comprehensive view of the performance and costs associated with each of the campaigns within the IO. This consolidated approach simplifies the process of tracking and assessing the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
Refer to the table below for more information on the individual functions that can be managed at the campaign level and/or IO level:
Setting | Insertion Order (IO) | Campaign |
Scheduling | IO dates define the timeframe during which the IO’s campaigns can run. | Each campaign can feature varying flights that take place during the dates defined at the IO level. |
Budget | IO budgets set the cumulative spend or cumulative impressions across the IO’s campaigns. | Campaign budgets allocate the IO budget across individual campaigns. The campaigns will stop serving once that campaign’s budget is reached or the IO budget has been reached–whichever takes place first. |
Targeting | N/A - Set at campaign level | When you define the campaign’s targeting strategy, you choose which campaign targeting elements to apply in order to strike the balance between scale, efficiency, and performance. |
Bid Strategy | N/A - Set at campaign level | A campaign’s Bid Strategy determines how aggressively it should bid based on how much you’d like to spend, how you’d like to pace bidding, and how often you’d like for users to see an ad. |
Creatives | N/A - Set at campaign level | Select one creative format per campaign, and add one creative or multiple creative versions. |
Inventory | N/A - Set at campaign level | Specify where ads should be placed by targeting Open Exchange inventory, Contextual inventory, or Private Marketplace (PMP) inventory deals. |
Optimization | N/A - Set at campaign level | Adjust individual campaign strategies such as bid amounts, creative rotation, and targeting criteria for different target-audience segments to improve performance. |
Conversions | N/A - Set at campaign level | Implement and test conversion and postback pixels to measure how ad exposure impacts how your target audience interacts with your brand or its products and services. |
Reporting | Report at the IO level to consolidate each of its strategies and gain an overall view of cost and performance. | Report at the campaign level to track the performance of specific targeting strategies and inform optimization decisions for current and future campaigns. |
Campaign targeting elements
Each campaign includes a set of required and optional campaign targeting elements. The ones you’ll apply and customize will differ by campaign depending on aspects such as your ad’s creative format, your target audience, and your marketing objectives, for example.
Review the Campaign targeting guide for more information on each required and optional campaign targeting element, and refer to Create or manage a campaign when you’re ready to apply these parameters and settings to a new or existing campaign.
Key terms and concepts
Advanced and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) campaigns
When you create a new campaign, we’ll prompt you to choose whether it’s an Advanced or Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) campaign. The option you’ll select depends on the type of inventory that the campaign will target.
Choose Advanced if your campaign will target Open Exchange inventory or Private Marketplace (PMP) inventory deals. Select PG instead if you’ll purchase inventory directly from a specific publisher.
Note that certain features are supported for Advanced campaigns only. Selecting PG will reduce your campaign-targeting options as you instead agree to commit a set budget for a fixed number of impressions, and at a guaranteed price.
Refer to Inventory groups overview for more information on Open Exchange, Private Marketplace (PMP), and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) inventory groups and the differences between these inventory sources.
Campaign measurement
Data and analytics are central to connecting ad spend to business results, and determining whether a campaign achieved the goals that you defined for it.
The “Reporting and analytics” collection is your guide to uncovering and interpreting the data that you’ll use to improve performance across each of your strategies. This is made possible through IQM-platform features such as custom reports, insights reports, data dashboards, and more. Refer to “Reporting and analytics” collection overview for a full list of this collection’s resources.
Campaign optimization
When you optimize a campaign, you apply data-driven decisions to it based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics such as conversions, cost per conversion, return on investment (ROI), and more. This process typically involves analyzing data, testing different approaches, and making adjustments to campaigns based on the results.
The “Campaign delivery and optimization” collection is your guide to each of the tools and features you can leverage to inform your optimization decisions and manage the overall performance of your existing campaigns. For example, you might apply advanced modeling to certain campaign dimensions, set up Allowlists and Blocklists, and optimize the campaign’s pacing performance. Refer to “Campaign delivery and optimization” collection overview to get started.
Locate additional campaign resources