Correlation between Volume, Bid and CTR – Karma of Traffic (7)
Correlation between Volume, Bid and CTR – Karma of Traffic
It is not the secret that lots of things in our lives depend on steps we take and correlate with each other. We can even not think about some interrelations but they occur in real life - like stars influence on ocean streams and by that on globing warming, like speech of president influences on financial markets, like any action we take influences on our karma. This also concerns the process of mediabuying – there are lots of relations between different parameters, which beginner mediabuyer should know and take into consideration in his operational activity. Let’s have a look on some situations and find some consistent patterns on traffic behaviour, possible reasons of that and logical:
Real bid decreased – volume decreased – CTR decreased – This situation tells you that your traffic was stolen, so this is normal behaviour of traffic – you are losing volume. If you want to get back to the amount of traffic you had – you have to increase your bid and pay more for the same quality you used to have. Moreover, your advertisement is losing positions and when your position is lower - the user who landed on the site, already understands the structure of page and have an awareness if the spot is real video or advertisement space before he reaches your impression of banner, so he clicks less on ad-sports and as a result the quality of your traffic is going down. So the CTR is dropping as well.
Real bid kept the same – volume increased – CTR increased – This shows that the competitor before you (with higher bid) left the auction – so your position in bidding improved without any of your actions. That is why, you start to receive his traffic with higher quality paying for this the same money – perfect scenario! Because the quality of traffic is better- the CTR increases by itself. In this case – enjoy your earnings and try to fight with next competitor (higher bid one) for his traffic.
Real bid increased - volume decreased – CTR decreased - This means that the spot and targeting is very competitive at the moment. So obviously one competitor over-bid you, this is the reason why you lost some traffic and your CTR decreased even if you tried to get more volume and traffic quality. With this, the only consequence is that you are paying more for nothing because your traffic is not getting better.
Smart bid increased and/or real bid increased - volume increased – CTR increased - This is the most common case and the most logical trend. When you increase the bid - you get better position in fight for the traffic and so better impressions (if you had the 10th impression, now you can get for example 2nd one). This means that the quality of your traffic increases due to the probability of clicking on the banner and acquiring the offer for the user - the higher the better impression is. That is why the CTR is also increasing in relation with the rise of impression level. This explains why the volume of traffic increases as well – more sites has 1st impressions and less sites has 50th. The same works other way around – if the smart and real bid decrease – the quality of traffic decreases, so the same does CTR and volume as well.
A successful mediabuyer should be very attentive to small details, changes and interrelations – this is how he/she can make much more money than an average one. Hope these tips will help you and inspire you to pay more attentions to details and their correlations. Good luck to all!
I am not sure these are necessarily the right conclusions to draw for each situation. They may be one potential explanation, but definitely not the necessary explanation.
Indeed, it is one possible explanation but its not a certainty. In most cases it will make sense though.
What traffic platforms are you talking about btw? If its FB or GDN, there's maybe a handful of people in both companies that know the entire algorithm. Any marketeer who claims to know exactly how google/fb ranks ads is a con artist
Thank you for the tips!
I have a couple of questions...
1) What are the possible solutions in the case of "Real bid increased - volume decreased – CTR decreased " ? Should I pause? Wait it out? Bid more?
I assume if the campaign isn't profitable, you can wait it out or just pause it and if it is profitable, you can increase bid even more?
2) Should someone be bidding high and aim for 100% win right off the bat with a campaign? Elaborate please if the answer is no.
Thanks in advance!
Aris
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Originally Posted by 1jilliondollars
1 - In this case, we have two situations. The first one is: if I increased my bid and the volume and CTR descreased, I would put it back as it was and wait to see how the campaign evolves as there is no need to keep a high bid for no reason. The second is: if my campaign is profitable I would calculate my eCPM or eCPC and see how high I can go with my bid. If it is still not enough to get the first position, I would bid more than my eCPM/eCPC just to get it.
2 - When I start a campaign, I almost always aim for the first position (I don't get all the traffic as I put a capping). In my opinion it's good to start a campaign agressively and optimize according to good traffic quality. If you start low, you will optimize your campaign with bad traffic quality and possibly will start to cut segments (domains, OS, devices, etc.) that don't work with the 7th impression for example but can perfectly work with the first ones. Then you will start to scale up some positions but you already lost a lot of volume because of what you excluded before.
To be profitable you don't need to always aim for the first position. Of course that the first position has the best quality but sometimes it can be too expensive for you. The goal is to find the right balance between quality (accoridng to your offer) and price.
Cheers!
Got it, thanks a lot!
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