Companies spend heavily on advertising, with ad budgets steadily increasing each year. However, increasing ad spending isn’t the only way to improve results. Campaign optimization, which entails tweaking ad strategies to boost performance, is another option.
This guide describes ad optimization and the best strategies for boosting ad performance. It will help you run optimized campaigns and maximize your marketing budget.
What is ad campaign optimization?
Advertising optimization entails adjusting certain aspects of your campaign to achieve higher conversions. For example, you can use different keywords, change the ad creatives, or target a new audience to improve ad outcomes.
Ad optimization is necessary for any brand or affiliate marketer running digital campaigns. Since the desired results may not always be achieved, constant optimization is necessary to boost ad performance.
7 key strategies for optimizing your campaign
Optimizing your campaign involves following well-thought strategies. They include:
1. Define clear goals and metrics
Optimizing your campaign begins with having clear objectives. Do you want more signups, sales, website visits, or app downloads? Your campaign objective helps you choose the right metrics to optimize.
For example, if you need more website visits, your target metric should be the click-through rate (CTR). This metric refers to the number of clicks an ad gets compared to its impressions. In this case, cost-per-click (CPC) is an optimal pricing model when using advertising platforms for your campaigns.
If you are interested in raising brand awareness or launching a new product, you should focus on the number of impressions, which means how many visitors have seen your ad. Generally, you would focus on the cost-per-mille (CPM) model here. Having a clear objective puts you on the right path toward optimizing your campaign for better results.
To Contents ↑2. Match your strategy to the customer journey
Your ad campaign should be centered on the customer’s journey. This journey can be divided into three main stages that are relevant here. We will omit the loyalty and advocacy stages as the finale of ad performance:
- Awareness is the first step when a new lead learns about your brand.
- Consideration is when the lead seeks more information about your product and forms their opinion.
- Decision is the stage where the customer decides to buy your product.
Customers at each stage have different needs, demanding different ad approaches. Understanding the stage you’re targeting helps you optimize ads better.
To Contents ↑3. Expand your tactics and channels
Optimization involves expanding your advertising tactics and channels. For instance, if you previously advertised on social media, you can expand to other channels like search engines and podcasts. If you previously ran image ads, you can add video and audio ads to the mix. Diversifying your ad tactics and channels helps improve outcomes.
Multichannel campaigns let you reach a wider audience and get more customers. It enables you to reach different audiences on their preferred channels, increasing the chances of getting conversions.
You can also diversify your tactics within the same advertising channel. For example, if you run ads targeting a specific audience on Instagram, you can run a retargeting campaign focused on people who’ve previously interacted with your Instagram page. This audience is more likely to respond to your ads and convert into customers.
In the same manner, you can try out desktop or mobile, mainstream or niche, different operational systems, geos, and many other tactic settings. An advanced ad platform will have them ready for you as optimization tools.
To Contents ↑4. Use effective tools and technologies
Choose the right tools to help you optimize advertising campaigns. Many tools exist, and you can choose those that suit your needs. For example, Google Analytics provides detailed insights about your website or app. These insights let you evaluate if your ad campaigns give the desired results and know when to adjust them.
Optimizely provides A/B testing tools for your ad campaigns. Adsterra can show ads in various pre-selected creative formats, including Popunder, Social Bar, In-Page Push, and Interstitials, and monitor the results. Adsterra also enables you to target ads with 20+ metrics, such as location, operating system, device type, and many more. Likewise, our Custom Bid, Smart CPM, and CPA Goal tools help you optimize costs, and you can always get expert advice from our Partner Care support team if you need help.
Adsterra offers you to run ads in diverse ad formats, including those with up to 30X higher CTR and focused on tackling the ever-emerging problem of users’ ad fatigue. Leverage these formats to reach out to the right audience and generate high conversions today.
To Contents ↑5. Continuously test and optimize
Performance monitoring is a crucial part of running ad campaigns. You should continually monitor your campaigns to know if they provide the desired results. If not, you can tweak the target audience, channels, creatives, and other factors to improve conversions.
Even if your campaign produces optimal results, there’s always room for improvement. You can optimize different aspects and check for better performance. The “Kaizen” concept of continuous improvement is vital to ad optimization. You should always test different approaches, take metrics, and apply your findings.
6. Focus on proven strategies
The point of constant optimization and monitoring is identifying what strategies work best for your ads. Then, you should focus on these proven strategies for further optimization.
If you run multiple campaigns and observe one outperforming the others, you can focus on that campaign to drive more conversions. If you observe a specific ad creative driving better results, you can focus your optimization efforts on scaling this format for your other campaigns. Optimization is about learning what works and focusing on it for long-term success.
7. Implement retargeting campaigns
Retargeting involves showing ads to people who have previously interacted with your site. Although these people may not have previously purchased any product, they likely still remember your brand and will be responsive to new ads.
Adsterra ad campaign optimization
Adsterra allows brands to optimize their ad campaigns in many ways. These include:
- Creatives. You can test multiple images for your ad and monitor their results. Then, you can stick to the ad creative that works best.
- Frequency cappings. You can control your ad frequency, i.e., the number of times a single user can view your ad.
- Impression limits. You can set limits on the hourly, daily, and total number of impressions for your ad.
- Budgeting. Advertisers can set a specific budget, ensuring their ad spend never surpasses that limit.
- Time ranges. You can set your ad to show at specific time ranges, excluding unprofitable hours to maximize conversions.
- Blocklists. You can block ads from appearing on specific sites, usually the sites your ads don’t perform well on. This way, your ads will be shown only on higher-converting sites.
Adsterra makes advertising optimization a cakewalk. With a network of 36,000+ direct publishers, you have access to endless websites to show ads to the perfect audience.
To Contents ↑Advantages of campaign optimization
Enhanced performance tracking
Optimization involves constantly monitoring your campaign results. It entails having key objectives and tweaking your campaign to achieve more of them. These actions let you stay updated about your campaign and make informed decisions. You can quickly identify and rectify errors, giving you the best results for your ad budget.
Boosted campaign performance
Campaign optimization helps you generate more conversions with the same marketing budget. For example, if you aim at a more targeted audience, you’ll get more signups, downloads, or purchases despite having the same marketing budget. Optimized campaigns help you achieve more with less ad budget.
Increased return on investment (ROI)
Optimized campaigns perform better than non-optimized campaigns in the long term. Hence, you’ll get a better ROI for your marketing budget in the long run. You’ll reach a wider audience and get more customers with your optimized campaigns.
Sustainable business growth
Optimized campaigns help brands generate more sales over time. It drives sustainable business with more potential and delivers higher profits. You can then invest the profits in more advertising campaigns, optimize them, and retain the positive feedback loop.
Conclusion
Ad optimization helps businesses get the best output for their advertising input. It drives long-term business growth and extracts more results from your marketing efforts. Our ad optimization guide has described the top strategies to boost campaign performance and improve your advertising ROI.
Adsterra provides many opportunities to optimize your campaign in the long term. You can adjust your ad creatives, target audience, and other factors with a few clicks. Our platform enables you to optimize and constantly monitor the performance of your ads. Join Adsterra and begin your ad optimization journey.
To Contents ↑Ads optimization FAQ
Optimization is the process of refining your ad campaigns to spur the best results. It involves tweaking various aspects of your ad, such as the targeting settings and creatives, to get the highest conversions within the allocated ad budget.
Improving your ad copy begins with having clear goals and objectives for the ad. Then, you can expand your ad tactics and channels and monitor the results over time.
Optimization examples include changing your ad format, creatives, and target audience. Then, monitor the results and focus on the strategies that generate the best conversions. With these steps, you’ll observe a long-term improvement in your ad campaign results.
Ad optimization usually takes 1 to 2 weeks to reflect, depending on the size of your changes. Yet, ad optimization is a continuous process that you shouldn’t stop. You should constantly tweak your ads and monitor the results. The key is focusing on the strategies that work best and discarding the strategies that give subpar results.
