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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. |
Optimization & Delivery | N/A - Set at campaign level | A campaign’s Optimization & Delivery settings determine whether optimizations will be automatically or manually applied, 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
More on campaign optimization: You can enable AI Based Optimization in your campaign’s Optimization & Delivery settings. This feature signals the platform’s AI engine to automatically optimize your campaign in an attempt to achieve the Campaign Objective and Campaign Goal that you define. It bases these optimizations on an initial pre-optimization learning phase, and later on ongoing KPI performance after AI Based Optimizations are applied.
Refer to Optimization & Delivery overview for more information on AI Based Optimization and requirements. |
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.
Campaign Templates
Campaign template notice: Items included in the Campaign Info section, such as budget, bid price, and date details, are excluded from campaign templates. |
Streamline your campaign-creation operations by templatizing the campaign targeting settings that you plan to reuse in future campaigns.
Each time you create a new campaign, you’ll have the option to start from scratch or from a template. These templates can be created from either new or existing campaigns.
Campaign Templates are supported for both Advanced and PG campaigns. Refer to Create or manage a campaign to get started with Campaign Templates.
AI Insights
AI Insights surface insights related to campaign-level performance.
The "CampaignPulse" AI Insights feature automatically checks critical or high-risk blockers to a campaign’s ability to serve ad impressions. You can also run CampaignPulse on-demand at any time for eligible campaigns. This diagnostic tool lets you know which issues are putting your campaign at the greatest risk, and what actions to take to address them.
Note that CampaignPulse is designed to help you detect and address significant risks to campaign delivery. For other campaign-optimization tools and strategies, refer to Optimization overview.
Review Create or manage a campaign or Manage a campaign from a dashboard to get started with CampaignPulse.
CampaignPulse eligibility requirements
All advertisers are eligible to run CampaignPulse for eligible campaigns. Refer to the table below for campaign-eligibility criteria.
Requirement type | Requirement details |
Vertical | Specialty Political Healthcare |
Campaign type | Advanced |
Campaign status | Running, with a Start Date in the past |
Note that certain checks (IAB size checks for creatives, scheduling checks, and targeting checks) are triggered when CampaignPulse observes critical daily pacing on eligible campaigns. Refer to CampaignPulse delivery insights for more information on checked categories and their descriptions.
CampaignPulse delivery insights
CampaignPulse checks for human errors, conflicting campaign settings, and account issues that could put your campaigns at medium or high risk.
This feature continuously monitors campaign health to discover issues that could limit or stop ad delivery. It highlights actionable insights across account readiness, campaign setup, targeting, budgeting, delivery settings, and more to help keep campaigns running smoothly.
Refer to the table below for more information on what CampaignPulse monitors, and always review all CampaignPulse delivery insights closely for instructions on how to address the issues that can put your campaigns at risk.
Category | Description |
Balance | Monitors the Organization and Workspace’s account balance. |
Insertion Order (IO) | Tracks each campaign’s IO to catch expired campaigns and conflicts between the campaign and IO end dates before serving is interrupted. |
Budget | Surfaces IO-level budget constraints that can prevent otherwise eligible campaigns from serving. |
Creative | Confirms each campaign includes at least one Ready creative, and that the creatives’ sizes match the IAB’s standard format recommendations needed to access inventory at scale. |
Audience | Surfaces audience readiness issues that can prevent the targeting selections from being used. |
Scheduling | Surfaces when dayparting is limiting available delivery time for an under-pacing campaign. |
Targeting | Highlights when the creative format, device, and traffic configuration may be limiting eligible inventory for an under-pacing campaign. |
Locate additional campaign resources