Home > Paid Traffic Sources > POP / PPV / Redirect

---

Increasing Smart CPM bid and having less conversions (9)

---

I am running Smart CPM Pop campaigns in Propeller Ads and I realised that when i increase bid to scale some campaigns, number of conversions decrease. Let's say when I increase smart bid from 1.2$ to 1.7$, number of conversions significantly dropped. But when I increased from 1.7$ to 2$, conversion volumes restored. Here it means that increasing bid sometimes harm the campaign? What should be the strategy here to scale a smart CPM pop campaign in healthy way?

---

I also had the situation few times that my campaign tanked when I increased the bid.

That's why I never change bids in successful running campaigns.

When I want to test a different bid I create a new campaign for it.

One reason could be that the algorhythm just messes up.
Another reason can be that you open new placements when you bid higher and also receive more traffic to all other placements, the bad ones as well.

So before you then see higher profit from the higher bid you need to weed out non converting placements.

For different bids create different campaigns.

Keep placements that didn't convert at all blacklisted in the new campaigns.

Test placements again that converted on your original campaign but not good enough to be profitable there.

---

In this case when i create another campaign with higher bid, should I blacklist already converting sources of low bid campaign not to compete with myself?

---

I know that others have a different approach there but I don´t blacklist converting sources when I test other bids.

As long as you don´t change bids in running campaigns then you also don´t really risk to compete with yourself.

When placements are profitable on all bids enjoy the additional volume, when placements are only profitable on specific bids but not on others just block the non profitable bids.

Just take care that you don´t change bids in your running campaigns, then you also won´t get into a bid war with yourself.

---

When you create a new campaign for it say on Propeller ads, do you copy the existing campaign or you create a new one?

Not sure if that makes a difference.

---

When I run the same bid format I just duplicate.

That way all settings are already done and I only need toi make some minor changes.

But in the end there is no difference between a duplicate campaign and a new campaign with same settings.

---

How much of a difference in bid for PropellerAds to prevent starting a bid war with oneself? Is there a set difference that anyone has found?

---

When I do this, I like to separate the bids by about 10%, but it's still a bit tricky, the algo will "somewhat" rotate the ads, even when the bids are the same. I mean, even if you are the highest bidder with a very high budget, you still won't get all the impressions, the network needs to rotate several ads. You need to experiment with this, as long as you're profitable, just aim for the highest possible volume.

On top of that, if you use different ads in the cloned campaigns, you can basically treat them as separate ones and run them at the same bid. I've done that many times too. In the end, there is no universal rule for how to handle this, I guess many of us have different approaches.

---

In my opinion the most important thing to prevent a bid war with yourself is to don´t change bids in your running campaigns.
Just see it that way, for ongoing increasing bids you need different bids again and again.

Here is a very simple example how a bid war with yourself could start.

Let´s say you have a campaign with $0.05 CPC and want to test a new bid for more volume so you clone the campaign and run it with $0.06 CPC.

When they both have same creative CTR on the trafficsource the campaign with higher CPC will probably get more traffic because it will make the trafficsource more money.

And here comes the moment that decides if you start a bid war with yourself or not.

It´s just normal when the campaign with the lower bid now receives less traffic and you can try to increase the bid to get more volume again.
Let´s say you increase the bid to $0.07 CPC, that would mean you now have one campaign with $0.06 CPC and the one with the increased bit at $0.07 CPC.

Now suddenly the campaign that had the higher bid before has a lower bid and will probably receive less traffic.
That way you were able to get more traffic to the campaign with formerly $0.05 CPC again but have less traffic for the other campaign now.

How can you increase the traffic for the campaign with $0.06 CPC again?
Correct, when you increase the bid to a higher amount than the other campaign.

This could then go on and on and on and would get into a bid war with yourself without getting that more traffic so that in the end it only gets too expensive for you.
It´s just normal that you see lower volume in a campaign when you then run a campaign with same targeting but higher bid.

But a bid war only happens when you adjust your bids again and again so that you drive up your own bids constantly.

Just keep the bids the way they are and don´t touch them in your running campaigns.

Treat your campaigns as separated campaigns, then you will see which campaigns are doing better and which not.

When the one with higher bid and higher volume is doing better it´s great, then keep it running and don´t care about lower volume for the other campaign.

Blacklist placements when they don´t convert good enough to justify the higher price.
Then you won´t receive traffic from these placements anymore in the campaign with the higher bid and traffic will come back to the campaign with the lower bid.

This is a pretty simplified explanation but I hope you get what I mean.

Important is to don´t try to overbid yourself and to don´t keep changing bids in your running campaigns.

One condition for bidwars is that they need dynamic bids.
Work with static bids and a big part of the problem won´t even occur

---

Home > Paid Traffic Sources > POP / PPV / Redirect