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bidding vs traffic (6)

11-05-2014 03:58 AM #1 acepowermarketing (AMC Alumnus)
bidding vs traffic

i noticed that the traffic distribution based on bidders is something like this

1st - 100%
2nd - 50%
3rd - 20%
4th - 10%

am i correct? there is alot of difference in traffic betweeen the 1st and 5th bidder, something like 10x difference. given this, how do you maximise your profit? please allow me to explain.

if you choose to move to larger traffic sources keeping everything else constant, how much more can your traffic increase?

or would u rather try to work on your angle/strategy to raise your EPV? assuming u are in 5th place, raising to 1st on the same network gets you 10x more traffic, thats like getting 10 traffic sources.

are u always the top 3 bidders on your network? or are you doing maybe 10-20th bidder on larger networks?

11-05-2014 07:50 AM #2 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

This all depends on current situation on the particular placement/network. Your figures might be right for some placements, but totally off on other placements. People usually use daily budgets, so even tho they bid the highest, once the budget is spent, the traffic goes to lower bids. Many networks also employ some kind of algo that makes sure surfers do not see the same ads over and over, so even the highest bid wont get all the traffic even if the budget allows it. Then there is the frequency cap, lets say a site has an average of 5 pageviews per visitor, so in case the top bidder has set his cap to 1 impression per day, he will only get 20% of the traffic, while the lowest bid might get way more because his frequency capping is turned off.

In reality, you dont actually want to buy 100% of any sites traffic, thats showing your ads over and over to the same people, thus the creatives die faster and so do the offers. The most I usually try to buy is 50% when I do a flat buy, in bidding its even less usually as I dont engage in bidding wars unless I really have to. Getting 10 times more traffic from the same placement almost never means 10 times the income, I dont think I actually had this happen to me, not even once. I definitely prefer to run on multiple sources over maxing one source.

As for the top3 question : I try to stay in top5 at least, especially on networks that give strong preference to higher bids. On networks that distribute traffic more randomly, I also try to scrape the bottom with lower bids.

11-06-2014 07:25 AM #3 acepowermarketing (AMC Alumnus)

thank you very much for your response.

perhaps u could shed some light on this, i happen to accidentally test campaigns with different bids, say one at 2.5CPM and one at 1.5CPM. interestingly, on this particular adnetwork im seeing something i never seen on other networks, and that is 2.5CPM is performing WORSE in terms of EPV compared to 1.5CPM and this is pretty consistent in my results. other networks usually have a frequency cap and when i increase my bid i get higher EPV, but on this particular network my EPV drops although traffic increases.

perhaps its because they have no frequency cap and are showing the same ad to the same person multiple times?

when u say scrape the bottom. how bottom is bottom? number 10? number 1000? minimum bid? im guessing u are trying to max profit here. sometimes it could be minimum bid, however on this particular network im on it seems like i gotta balance to be around number 10, essentially frequency capping myself at around 1-2/24, but instead of having a freq cap i have to lower bids to achieve that.

11-06-2014 09:53 AM #4 zeno (Administrator)

1. Higher CPM might bring higher frequency
2. Higher CPM changes placement distribution > traffic quality goes down for whatever reasons (purely due to placements).

When he says scraping the bottom I presume he means bidding whatever gets a stable but low volume. If you budget $10,000 you can bid at the floor and raise it until you are only able to spend $50/day. When you get to that point and only bid is holding you back, you're definitely scooping off the seabed.

11-06-2014 10:25 AM #5 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by xavierfok View Post
thank you very much for your response.

perhaps u could shed some light on this, i happen to accidentally test campaigns with different bids, say one at 2.5CPM and one at 1.5CPM. interestingly, on this particular adnetwork im seeing something i never seen on other networks, and that is 2.5CPM is performing WORSE in terms of EPV compared to 1.5CPM and this is pretty consistent in my results. other networks usually have a frequency cap and when i increase my bid i get higher EPV, but on this particular network my EPV drops although traffic increases.

perhaps its because they have no frequency cap and are showing the same ad to the same person multiple times?

when u say scrape the bottom. how bottom is bottom? number 10? number 1000? minimum bid? im guessing u are trying to max profit here. sometimes it could be minimum bid, however on this particular network im on it seems like i gotta balance to be around number 10, essentially frequency capping myself at around 1-2/24, but instead of having a freq cap i have to lower bids to achieve that.
Some networks have minimum bids for certain placements, or the bids are higher on certain placements, so your ads wont be shown on them unless your bid is high enough. Maybe this one particular network has placements like this but from some reason, they are not compatible with your offer, so with lower bids you do not show on them and EPV is fine, when you increase it, you get to those placements but since its not working with your offer, the EPV goes down. Usually it should work the other way around tho, these expensive placements should actually convert better. It might also have something to do with higher frequency as Zeno suggested, does that particular network allow daily freq caps? You might try to set daily cap to 1 and then increase the bid to see if it happens again. But my bet is that higher bid gets you to placements that dont work for you from whatever reason.

As for the bottom scrapping, its like Zeno said, I bid minimum or whatever is needed to get some consistent traffic going, often combined with a loose daily freq cap.

11-06-2014 10:44 AM #6 acepowermarketing (AMC Alumnus)

On this particular campaign, 80% of my conversions are coming from one placement. Which means I'm essentially bidding for one placement. Sounds like it's more of the frequency issue?

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