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Did My Revcontent Rep Give Me Bad Info? (5)

05-01-2020 11:04 PM #1 rfiredig (Member)
Did My Revcontent Rep Give Me Bad Info?

Hey Guys,

I need a little help. I just started running on Revcontent again since they've made all the changes. I'm liking the results so far, but confused at the bidding structure.

My rep told me once I place the bid to start the campaign, I should never change it. Instead, I should only change the widget bids. So I've been doing blanket widget bid adjustments (except for on performing widgets) to try and scale. Is this what those of you who are successful on Rev are doing?

05-02-2020 01:34 AM #2 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by rfiredig View Post
Hey Guys,

I need a little help. I just started running on Revcontent again since they've made all the changes. I'm liking the results so far, but confused at the bidding structure.

My rep told me once I place the bid to start the campaign, I should never change it. Instead, I should only change the widget bids. So I've been doing blanket widget bid adjustments (except for on performing widgets) to try and scale. Is this what those of you who are successful on Rev are doing?
I'm not sure exactly what your rep meant...

There's three levels of bidding:

Campaign Bid
Target Bid
Widget Bid

Back in the day there were tons of targets you could choose, but now there's only three (Native, Push, or Adblock), so as a result the "Campaign Bid" is a bit redundant. I just leave it at the default of 0.35$ and forget about it, since the Target Bid will overrule it anyway.

Presuming you have selected "Native" as the target, then whatever that target bid is set to will be the bid for the campaign and the amount being bid on every widget they have.

If you then switch a widget to 0.01$, that individual widget will bid at 0.01$ while the rest bid at the Target Bid still.

Your Target Bid is going to really determine how much traffic you get, so I would definitely change that one to increase/decrease the amount of traffic you are getting. If you set it to low and don't change it you'll never get any traffic... if you set it too high you'll be overbidding.

So yeah, I would view that one kind of like the gas pedal of the campaign... and then widgets that are doing poorly I would either a) block, or b) bid down... and then widgets that are performing well you would bid up.

You could certainly start at a medium Target Bid and then leave it be and just try to scale by bidding up the converting widgets, but I think the Target Bid is a useful tool in and of itself, as- again- if it's too low you won't get enough traffic and may not even get exposure to the best widgets and not discover them in the first place, or conversely if it's too high you may be paying too much for the traffic.

It's possible your rep just meant that you want to "double down on your winners" and that this would be more profitable than just raising the target bid only, and that is right, but I wouldn't agree to "never" touch the target bid.



Note: If you have a few widgets that are converting but you aren't profitable overall, you can also lower the Target Bid way down to like 0.01$ while bidding high on the converting widgets, and effectively create a little "whitelist campaign" by doing so. Obviously your potential to scale would be limited in that case though.



Hope that helps!

05-02-2020 01:52 AM #3 rfiredig (Member)

Thanks, that's super helpful! So, to make sure I understand, the "max cpc" bid under widget targeting is what we should use to control the pace of the campaign by bidding up on profitable widgets if we want more traffic, correct? Or bid down or block. We don't need to worry about the campaign bid under "settings" is what you're saying as well.

05-02-2020 03:05 AM #4 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by rfiredig View Post
Thanks, that's super helpful! So, to make sure I understand, the "max cpc" bid under widget targeting is what we should use to control the pace of the campaign by bidding up on profitable widgets if we want more traffic, correct? Or bid down or block. We don't need to worry about the campaign bid under "settings" is what you're saying as well.

Yeah... What I'm saying is that "Campaign Bid" (under the campaign "settings" heading) is trumped by "Target Bid" (under the "Targeting" heading) which is in turned trumped by "Widget Bid" (under the "Widget Targeting" heading).

So for example...

If your Campaign Bid is set to 0.35$ but your Target Bid is set to 0.20$, then all the widgets within that Target (the "Native" Target typically) will be set to 0.20$.

However, if you go to the "Widget Targeting" heading, and go to "Breitbart - 86250" and change it to 0.03$, then you will be bidding 0.03$ on that specific Breitbart widget and 0.20$ on everything else.


And yes, the spot where you change the bid for a target or an individual widget says "Max CPC Bid" above it, and is on the right side of those respective pages. The place where you would change the Campaign Bid is halfway down the "Settings" page, but again, that bid is somewhat redundant anyway.

So yeah... as soon as you start a campaign, to to the "Targeting" page and change the bid on "Native" to whatever you want it to be.

Then, once traffic starts coming in, you can adjust individual widgets based on performance under the "Widget Targeting" page



Hope you kill it and see lots of green!

05-02-2020 04:24 PM #5 rfiredig (Member)

Thanks, it all makes sense now!

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