Content:
When to use Maximize Conversions
How Maximize Conversions works
How to set up a Maximize Conversions campaign in Realize
How to optimize a Maximize Conversions campaign in Realize
What Maximize Conversions is
Maximize Conversions is an automated bidding strategy. It means that you don’t need to set up bids manually; instead, you can put a daily, monthly or lifetime budget and let the SmartBid algorithm choose the cost-per-click to meet your campaign’s performance goal.
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📌 Maximize Conversions learns as it goes, using our AI, historical data from the network and information about every bid’s performance to adjust future bids and find the audiences that are more likely to take a desirable action.
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When to use Maximize Conversions
Maximize Conversions is the most versatile strategy suitable for both new and experienced advertisers running conversion-based campaigns. These conversions can be more upper-funnel, like page views or impressions, or lower-funnel, like form submissions or purchases. Whether they are tracked or not, Maximize Conversions aims to find audiences who are more likely to take the desired actions and assist in achieving the campaign's objectives.
How Maximize Conversions works
Realize conducts an auction every time ad spaces suitable for your campaign become available. Maximize Conversions enters the most promising auctions, adjusts your bids to win the best opportunities, and helps get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget.
The success of Maximize Conversions is based on performance data. There are two types of data that it can use:
- The data of your network, accounts, and campaigns. To use this data, you must implement the Taboola Pixel or Server-to-server tracking (S2S).
- Taboola’s network data. The algorithm of Maximize Conversions uses it by default, you don’t need to do anything.
That’s why the recommended way of using Maximize Conversions is with implemented tracking. In this case, Maximize Conversions optimizes campaigns towards the lowest cost per conversion — actions measured in Realize that are part of the unique customer journey, such as leads, purchases, app installs, or page views. You can also choose which conversion event your campaigns should optimize towards.
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📌 If you need time to implement tracking, use Maximize Conversions without the Taboola Pixel or S2S in the meantime to “warm up” the algorithm. This will lead to even better performance once the tracking implementation is completed.
Without a Pixel, Maximize Conversions will use learnings from the our AI and network to optimize campaigns towards page views and impressions, driving consideration or engagement metrics. However, you can’t choose which conversion campaigns should be optimized, and you won’t be able to track conversion-related metrics in Realize. |
What target CPA (tCPA) is
You can set a target CPA to your Maximize Conversions campaign if you want to cap your spend at a certain conversion cost and stabilize your campaign at that CPA. By setting a CPA target, the algorithm will continue to maximize conversions, but within the set cost.
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❗Keep in mind that a target, especially a strict one, might limit your scale, as the algorithm will always prioritize the target over depleting the budget.
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To use the target CPA:
- Your campaign must have sufficient performance data from the learning phase, with at least 50 conversions in 7 consecutive days.
- Your account or network must have the Taboola Pixel or Server-to-Server (S2S) tracking implemented.
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❗We do not recommend setting a target CPA in the first few days of your campaign. This is because it may take significantly longer to go through the learning phase and to stabilize performance. If you do want to apply a target CPA to your campaign, we recommend you wait until your CPA has leveled off for 3-4 days, and use this data as a benchmark to set your target.
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How to set up a Maximize Conversions campaign in Realize
You may update your Bidding Strategy from multiple fields. The following instructions indicate how to apply Maximize Conversions as the bidding strategy to a new campaign and/or add a CPA target.
New campaign
1. Navigate to the Campaign tab, click on +Create and choose Campaign in the dropdown menu to create a new campaign.
2. Fill in all mandatory fields, such as Campaign name, Brand name, Marketing Objective, etc., and click on Next.
3. Navigate to Bidding Strategy and select Maximize Conversions if it’s not selected yet.
4. If you want to add target CPA (tCPA), check the box near Set a target cost per action (CPA) and set up Target CPA goal.
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❗Remember to insert an achievable CPA goal based on previous performance or using results from similar native platforms. Target CPA is not recommended to use for completely new campaigns on Realize.
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5. Navigate to Budget and add your daily, monthly or lifetime budget for the campaign. Remember to apply a daily budget that is at least 10X your expected CPA goal. For example, if your expected CPA is $25 and 10 conversions a day, you should put a daily cap of at least $250.
6. If you applied a daily budget, then you need to navigate to Spending Limit and add either a Monthly or Lifetime limit.
7. Click on Create & Add Ads to complete the campaign setup.
Existing campaign
1. Navigate to the Campaign tab and select the Campaigns subsection.
2. Scroll down to your campaigns, click on the pencil icon next to the campaign you want to update.
3. In the opened preview window for your campaign, scroll down and go to the Budget and Bidding section.
4. Make the necessary changes and click on Save.
How to optimize a Maximize Conversions campaign in Realize
There are several approaches to optimization that you can apply to enhance Maximize Conversions performance.
Adding tracking
If you use Maximize Conversions without the Taboola Pixel or S2S tracking, consider implementing it first. Correct tracking allows you to gather more performance data about campaigns and optimize them accordingly.
Adjusting your budget
One of the most effective ways to control costs with Maximize Conversions is via adjustments to your budget. The algorithm is designed to get the most conversions possible within your set budget – naturally some opportunities are more expensive than others, so you can adjust your budget up and down to find the right balance for you between scale and cost. Remember that the minimum daily budget you should set is 10X your CPA target.
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❗We would recommend this as the primary way to control costs, however, it’s important not to make too drastic changes to the budget to avoid fluctuating performance. It’s not recommended to increase more than double the daily cap at a given time.
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Setting a target CPA
In addition to/instead of controlling costs via your budget, you can also do so via setting a target CPA. It’s important to set a realistic target to not limit the algorithm in achieving your goal. For example, setting a goal that is too low may result in missing out on quality opportunities that could lead to a conversion, resulting in very limited scale.
The recommended way to use target CPA is to first run Maximize Conversions without a target until your campaign achieves at least 50 conversions over 7 consecutive days and the CPA has stabilized. You should then use this average CPA to set your target. If you want to set your target CPA based on other sources we would suggest using the following methodology:
- Analyze your results across different advertising channels to determine your optimal target looking mostly at channels most similar to native (avoiding very lower funnel activity such as paid search).
- Calculate the maximum cost you’re able to afford per conversion. We recommend starting by setting your CPA goal around 20% higher than your ideal target to give the algo enough scope to learn. After the first few weeks of activity including the learning phase, you can lower the CPA target over time should you need to bring performance to be more in line with your goal.
Site Optimization
You will not be able to boost/deboost sites with Maximize Conversions because our algorithm will do this automatically. However, you will still have the ability to control which publisher sites your ads appear on by applying a block list or speaking with your account manager to apply an approved list.
Additionally, to automate your site optimizations and help minimize wasted spend, you can leverage our Custom Rules feature. It offers the ability for any user to set their own automated rules on campaigns that will make a change when a condition is met.
Creative Optimization
Getting your creative right is one of the most important things you can do to optimize your campaign. It’s important to follow Realize's best practices before launching a Maximize Conversions campaign and to optimize your creatives as you would do normally on any other Realize campaign, including regularly refreshing your ads.
FAQ
Q: What should my budget be?
A: When using Maximize Conversions, your daily cap should be no less than 10-15X your expected CPA (or $50 if your expected CPA is below $5) in order to give the algorithm enough opportunities and data to learn from. Once the campaign stabilizes you can then alter your budget.
Maximize Conversions is designed to fully spend your daily budget aiming to gain as many conversions as possible under the campaign targeting, so if you’re currently spending much less than your daily budget with your other Realize campaigns, Maximize Conversions could increase your spend significantly.
Q: What should I expect in the first few days?
A: In the first 2-5 days the algorithm learns what’s the optimal use to the given budget. During this phase you might notice higher CPA and a lower conversion volume.
As the calibration process progresses, you should see your CPA start to decrease and stabilize, and your conversion volume will increase day over day.
Q: What should I do if my CPA is too high after the first few days?
A: If your campaign learning phase is taking longer than expected, it could be for one of the following reasons:
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Your conversion event is too rare and the algorithm needs more data – if you haven’t reached 30 conversions after the first 5 days, then you should consider changing which event you optimize towards, choosing the one closest to your primary conversion event
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Your daily budget is too low – we need between 10x and 15x your average CPA during the learning phase to train the algorithm
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It’s also important to choose a realistic expected CPA from which to benchmark your daily budget – if this makes the daily budget higher than you would like, then you can choose a different conversion goal to optimize towards (higher up the funnel) during the learning phase
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Your creative is not effective – getting your creative right is one of the most important things you can do to optimize your campaign, and if you don’t have strong creative this will impact all campaign metrics, resulting in a longer learning phase
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You targeting is too restrictive – if you have a long site block list or you’re targeting a very niche audience, this may result in a longer learning phase, and a lengthier process to get to stabilized CPA performance
It’s also important to avoid making changes to your campaign settings during the learning phase as this will prolong the process.
Q: How often can I optimize or make changes to the campaign?
A: Let the campaign run for at least 3-4 days before making any changes. Each time you optimize, allow the algorithm 2-3 days to complete its learning before making any further adjustments.
If you optimize your campaign’s budget or target CPA, don’t change it by more than 50% at a time.
Q: When can I set a tCPA?
A: Don’t set a target CPA at the start of the campaign; allow the algorithm to complete its learning first. If you wish to have a better control over the cost per action, we recommend setting a target after 50 conversions in 7 consecutive days were achieved. Remember, this may limit your scale!
Q: What should I do if, after long periods of time, my campaign's performance starts to decline?
A: Don’t switch the bidding strategy, if your campaign performance starts to decline after a long period of time (e.g. two weeks). Instead, refresh your creatives or optimize the campaign.
✅ If you have questions or concerns, contact your Account Manager or email support@taboola.com