Smart CPM or Standard CPM (7)
Quite a few traffic sources offer Dynamic / Smart CPM.
I have been using Dynamic because it was suggested by my account manager when I started.
What do you guys use? And what are the pros and cons for both types of bidding?
When the trafficsource SmartCPM then you should use it.
There are good placements and there are bad placements so it just doesn't make sense to pay same price for all placements.
But exactly this is what you do with fixed CPM.
Of course that can also work very good and there are some trafficsource out there that only support fixed CPM but generally you can say that you save (often lots of) money when you run SmartCPM.
Once I did a splittest between fixed and SmartCPM.
Same targeting, fresh campaign, no targets blacklisted yet.
With fixed CPM I paid up to 7 or 9 times for same traffic volume compared to SmartCPM.
It was a campaign in high volume/low cost Geo.
Of course these numbers can vary and although it can differ based on the placements that send traffic but I always run SmartCPM when it's available.
Generally speaking smart cpm is usually the way to go, but it really depends on the traffic source / site / geo.
For example on some traffic sources Smart CPM can get you in trouble, especially if you're not constantly watching it.
For example say your "ideal" bid is 0.12. Well depending on how many other advertisers there are, you might have to set your Smart CPM as high as 0.25 or something to get the traffic going at that 0.12 bid.
Well then you go to sleep and wake up realizing after you went to bed a bidding war happened and you been paying 0.20 for the last 12 hours and bleeding money.
So it really depends on the source.
Edit: I'm assuming you were targeting 1 spot. However like Twinaxe said if you're running some sort of blacklist campaign with multiple spots then yeah Smart CPM is the way to go.
Sure, I was talking about running RON and with blacklists.
When running whitelisted campaigns then of course fixed CPM is the way to go because at that point you know already how much you can pay per whitelisted placement and can bid accordingly.
SMART/Dynamic bidding for sure ... there is no reason to use fixed CPMs when the other options are offered.
I also experienced significant differences between the traffic costs when using smart bidding compared to fixed, not as dramatic as twinaxe mentioned, but the difference can be BIG.
Originally Posted by jabong82
It gives me more room to play and I may have the best bid for longer periods.
On platforms where I don't control it I usually overpay and I have to watch like hawk if the bid situation had changed:
- if someone overbid me: volume and CTR goes down
- if I'm top: volume and CTR usually goes up, but ROI and overall performance may go down
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