Campaign optimization is the process of making data-driven decisions to improve a campaign’s performance. These decisions are based on metrics such as Conversions, Cost Per Conversion (CPC), Return on Investment (ROI), and other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), depending on your marketing objectives.

Optimization isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process. Instead, it involves analyzing data, testing various approaches, and making small, informed adjustments to the campaign based on the results.

Before you can optimize a campaign, you’ll first need to uncover and interpret data and insights related to that campaign. Your essential tools for reporting and analytics are data dashboards, custom reports, and Insights reports.

Your first step to optimization is understanding your campaign’s starting point: monitoring performance in real time, analyzing and comparing key metrics, and identifying trends.

You can monitor the campaign’s real-time performance at a glance and make ad-hoc adjustments to it in the Dashboard app. You can create customized dashboards that fit your needs and track progress over time.

After you begin applying optimizations, you can return to your dashboard to compare whether key metrics are performing better (% increase) or worse (% decrease) than they were during the previous reporting window.

Refer to Dashboard overview for more information, including instructions on how to customize your dashboard, and information about each metric and dimension that you can measure there.

With the Reports app, you can drag and drop dimensions and metrics to create fully customized reports. Generate the insights that matter most to the business, and use them to inform current and future campaign optimizations.

All reports must include at least one dimension and metric.

For example, you might create a report to assess the number of Impressions (metric) related to a particular campaign (dimension).

Refer to Reports overview to get started with custom reports.

Insights reports include a pre-defined set of metrics and dimensions. They surface granular data without the need for manual customization. Each Insights report is expertly crafted to focus on a distinct area, whether it’s a campaign’s available impressions or an audience’s characteristics and behaviors, for example. Create one to quickly identify trends and determine the precise adjustments that could drive better results for your campaigns.

Refer to these resources to get started with Insights reports:

The "Reporting and analytics” Help center collection is your primary resource for campaign measurement and insights. Review the Reporting and analytics collection overview guide for more information on each of this collection’s resources.

Your data deep dive uncovered an underperforming metric that you’d like to improve. Now you can improve campaign delivery and performance by applying informed optimizations to the campaign.

It’s important to note that you should apply one or few changes to the campaign at a time. Depending on how soon your campaign is ending, we recommend waiting 24 hours so you can reassess performance based on the optimization(s) you’ve made. Otherwise, it’s difficult to determine which changes are having the most impact.

Your essential tools for campaign delivery and optimization are advanced modeling, allowlists and blocklists, pacing management features, and Bid Strategy features. If you’re just getting started with campaign optimization, begin with advanced modeling: the IQM platform’s more powerful optimization tool.

No two campaigns are the same. Monitoring real-time performance and continually refining your strategy are crucial to ensure every dollar is spent efficiently—but this presents a challenge when you’re managing several campaigns simultaneously.

A Bid Model is a high-performance machine that you can steer to optimize your campaigns. You create a set of rules that the Bid Model deploys as the campaign runs. With intuitive controls, you can adjust bids with Bid Modifiers, allocate budgets with Spend Ratios, and define priorities with Dimension Priorities to optimize performance in real time, and all in one place. While you have full control of this tool, its built-in functionalities help ensure your optimization settings are applied intelligently. For example, daily spend performance checks determine how your campaign’s Dimension Priorities are executed.

Refer to Advanced modeling to get started with the Bid Model app and learn more about the Bid Model settings that you can apply to supported campaign dimensions.

Pacing determines if your strategies are on track to spend in full based on how much they’ve spent so far and how much time is remaining in the campaign or insertion order (IO). Taking an active approach to pacing helps ensure you gather enough trend details to inform your optimization decisions. You’ll decide whether to shift budgets to different strategies in real time based on market changes, or adjust other elements such as frequency caps to drive spend performance.

Review Pacing to learn about pacing metrics (IO Pacing, Campaign Pacing, Daily Pacing) and where you can manage them throughout the platform.

Note that, while optimizing certain metrics is straightforward, the factors that can influence a campaign’s pacing performance are vast. Refer to Troubleshoot a campaign that’s pacing behind to uncover the primary factors that can influence pacing performance and optimization recommendations to address them.

Allowlists and Blocklists are the rules you establish to determine which ad impressions a campaign is eligible to bid on. These rules relate to various campaign elements such as Locations, Device IDs, Audiences, and more.

Refer to Allowlists and Blocklists to define which ad impressions your campaign is eligible to bid on.

Budget and impression capping, bid pacing, and frequency capping are the three tools that form a campaign’s Bid Strategy. How you manage them can impact a campaign’s ability to achieve its performance goals and pace on track.

Refer to Bid Strategy to learn how budget caps, frequency caps, and bid pacing work; and follow steps to manage a campaign’s Bid Strategy.

You used the Dashboard app to measure and track your campaign’s performance. You can also save time by adjusting certain campaign elements—like budgets and bid prices—directly from your dashboard.

Refer to Manage a campaign from a dashboard to to learn more.

The “Campaign delivery and optimization” Help center collection is your primary resource for upleveling your campaigns. Review the Campaign delivery and optimization collection overview guide for more information on each of this collection’s resources.

Optimization is a cyclical process: Evaluate, optimize, measure, and repeat. Apply informed improvements to your campaign’s settings and return to the “Reporting and analytics” step to understand the factors that are influencing its performance before changing more elements.

Knowing these factors helps inform current and future campaign settings. But note that the bid landscape is variable based on changes in available impressions, market seasonality, and other dynamic factors. What works best for one campaign may not work for another. Regularly monitor your campaigns every time to hit your performance metrics.

Optimization can be a reactive process. Take a proactive approach to future campaigns’ performance with campaign planning and forecasting.

Pre-optimize your audience and targeting details with the Planner app’s custom media plans and the Campaign app’s “Campaign Estimations" tool.