Outbrain Tutorial for Native Noobs - Part 3 (3)
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As was mentioned in the beginning of this tutorial, theOptimizer can be a pretty powerful optimization tool. However, even if you're not planning on subscribing to it at this time, you can still benefit from the content below, as you can MANUALLY implement the rules yourself, instead of setting them up in theOptimizer.
Doing so would be a lot of work, and you probably can't check your campaign every 10 minutes like theOptimizer can, but it would still be doable!
Setting Up theOptimizer Account
Next we need to add your Outbrain and
-Log into theOptimizer.
-Choose "Account Wizard" from left menu. In next screen, for "Traffic Source Setup" click "Add new".
-Fill in the info for your Outbrain account as follows, except of course you'd be inserting your own Outbrain account login details. (Note: Outbrain's stats are set to Eastern Standard Time or UTC -5:00, so "America/New_York".) Click "Load Accounts", choose the Outbrain account you want to use from the dropdown, and click "Save Traffic Source".
-Next we need to grab an Access Key from the tracker. Log into
-Go back to theOptimizer. Click "Next" to go to "Tracker Setup". Click "Add new". Fill out the information as below - of course you'd be copying your unique Access Key details from Voluum. For "Conversion registration time reporting" I chose to go by "Visit timestamp" because that would help if I want to daypart later on. (The "Postback timestamp" can show a much-later time than the time Outbrain sent us the visitor. Delays would be caused by the time the visitor spends on the lander and offer sites, delays in conversion postback from aff networks to tracker, etc.)
Lastly, click "Save Tracker". Then click "Next".
-Last thing to do: Choose from the dropdown what you named your Outbrain traffic source within your Voluum account. Make sure you get a list of green checkmarks for the tokens, as shown in the screenshot below. Then click "Finish".
-OPTIONAL: If you would like to receive a notification by Email or via Slack or Telegram, every time theOptimizer makes a change to your campaign, you can set that up in "Settings" in the left menu.
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Creating Rules in theOptimizer Account
Simply click on "Rules" in the left menu, then "+ New Rule" to start setting up a rule in theOptimizer.
Below are some suggestions of what rules you can set up. I want to emphasize that the rules I present below are still "works in progress" as I haven't run a lot of traffic to them. The best way to set up these rules, would be to run a campaign without using rules, accumulate some data FIRST, and THEN analyze the data to figure out what rules would have achieved the best results. As this was my first campaign, I had no such data, so please keep this in mind when reading the rules I'm suggesting below. If I find some time to run more campaigns on Outbrain in the future, I will no doubt continue to tweak the rules further and report back.
Also, I'm sure that one set of rules will not fit all campaigns.
Nevertheless, I will present what I have, and tell you the justification behind each rule, so you'll have some food for thought to build on.
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theOptimizer Rules - Basic Options
First thing you need to define, after clicking on "+ New Rule", is the action you're wanting to set up a rule for.
Then you'll be presented with options for setting up the rule. I'll very quickly go over each option.
Rule Name - Self-explanatory. A meaningful name will help avoid confusion.
Rule Group - Can ignore this option - it's just for tagging certain rules with a group name.
Considering data from - How many days of data theOptimizer should take into account when evaluating the rule conditions you specify.
Rule Conditions - The conditions that need to be met in order for the action you specified in the beginning (e.g. Block Publishers). Can specify multiple conditions.
Widget Filtering - You'll only see this for certain types of rules. It doesn't currently work for Outbrain sections, but the developer told me that it soon will. This option allows you to apply the rule to a list of specified widgets (by selecting "Include" and specifying widget IDs), or apply the rule to all widgets OTHER THAN the specified widgets (by selecting "Exclude" and specifying widget IDs).
Apply rule to campaigns - Self-explanatory. Choose one or more campaigns from dropdown.
Run this rule every - How often you want theOptimizer to check for the conditions and run the rule. At first I thought "why not just set it to the highest frequency?" but that is sometimes not the best option - because Outbrain's API has rate limits.
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theOptimizer Rules - Recommended Rules
Here are some rules I would recommend setting up before the campaign is active.
Rule 1: Block Publishers that Spent X Times Payout Without Conversions
Considering data from: Last 3 Days
Run this rule every: Every 10 Minutes
Notes: The purpose of this rule is to limit the spend of a non-converting publisher. 4x payout is an arbitrary number I decided to use, but you can definitely test other values depending on how aggressively you wish to cut publishers, or not. For listicles, different offers are being promoted and each may have a different payout. In the beginning when I had no idea what the average conversion value was, I just used the payout value of the first offer in the listicle. Or, if you want to be conservative, you can use a payout value of that of the lowest-payout offer in the listicle.
I like to cut aggressively at first, keeping in mind that I can always reactivate a publisher/section to further testing later on.
Rule 2: Pause Sections that Spent X Times Payout Without Conversions
Considering data from: Last 3 Days
Run this rule every: Every 10 Minutes
Notes: This rule is for limiting the spend of each section. I set this to 1x payout, which is really aggressive - basically if a section doesn't start converting well straight away, it got cut. I only did this because I was working with a small budget. You may decide to set this to a higher value - I would recommend setting this to 2.
Rule 3: Block Publishers that Spent $X with ROI < -Y%
Considering data from: Last 90 Days
Run this rule every: Every 30 Minutes
Notes: The first two rules were to catch placements that spent money without converting right away. This rule and the next one below are to catch placements that get a lucky conversion (or what we call "lottery" conversion) at the start, and then stop converting with the same performance. Again, you can play with the exact dollar amount and ROI percentage to make this rule more aggressive or less so than how I have it.
Rule 4: Pause Sections that Spent > $X with ROI < -Y%
Considering data from: Last 7 Days
Run this rule every: Every 10 Minutes
Notes: Explained in previous rule.
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theOptimizer Rules: Optional Rules
In addition to the recommended rules above, I'll also leave you with the following rules that you can choose to add as applicable and as you prefer.
Rule 5: Set Campaign Budget to $X During Best-Converting Days+Hours
Considering data from: Today
Run this rule every: Every 1 Hour
Notes: If you know, either based on intel from affiliate networks (or elsewhere) or based on past data, that certain days or the week / hours of the day convert better than others, you can use this rule to set a higher or normal budget during those days and hours. In my case, because I was promoting offers where call centres needed to follow up with leads over the phone to close the deal, it was mandatory to run traffic during the call centres' hours of operation, so I set up this rule to spend $200/day during those hours.
Then I set up another rule (the next one below) to ramp down the traffic during hours when call centres were closed - during evenings and weekends. Why not just pause the campaign altogether you may ask? Remember I've mentioned that pausing an Outbrain campaign can be harmful for a campaign because it can mess up its automatic-optimization algo? This is why instead of pausing the campaign, I decreased the budget to $20/day to minimize losses ($20 is the lowest daily budget Outbrain will allow).
Note that by implementing these two rules, the traffic still wouldn't be staggered over all the hours specified - traffic would run out as normal when the daily budget is exhausted.
Rule 6: Set Campaign Budget to $Y During Worst-Converting Days+Hours
Considering data from: Today
Run this rule every: Every 1 Hour
Notes: Already covered in the rule above.
Rule 7: Change Content Bid to 70% of EPC
Considering data from: Last 7 Days
Run this rule every: Every 1 Hour
Notes: This is a powerful rule that continuously adjusts the content bid (CPC bid for each ad) to a % of the EPC (earnings/revenue per ad click). In the ideal world you'd be left with a profit (i.e. the other 30%, if you set the bid to 70% of EPC), which due to various reasons may or may not happen. But the rule will strive towards that goal.
IMPORTANT: Do not run this rule if you're running a campaign with the "Conversion" objective, where Outbrain is optimizing bids automatically already. Having theOptimizer and Outbrain both making changes to bids can make things complicated. But if you're wanting to give the "Traffic" objective a test, then this type of rule may be helpful.
This rule can work well if at least one of your ads is fetching good EPC, such that the resulting CPC bid (the 70% of EPC) would STILL be high enough to win bid auctions to get traffic. If the opposite is true, i.e. the resulting CPC is so low that the campaign isn't getting a lot of traffic, and/or not getting traffic from the best-converting placements, then it would be wise to refrain from implementing this rule until later in the campaign. Perhaps make other optimizations first (such as cutting placements) until the ad EPC is better, and THEN switch this rule on.
The "Do not allow the Bid to be lower than" should be set to a bid that isn't so low that you'd stop getting traffic. And the "Do not allow the Bid to be higher than" is to prevent the bid from "running away" - it would be safer to set a maximum here and then manually increase the bid as you see fit.
If you're not seeing decent EPC for ANY ad in ANY section, that probably means either your ads suck, or your landing page or offers do. In this case you'd need to identify what the issue is, likely by split-testing more ads and/or landing pages and/or offers.
(Here I'm ruling out Outbrain's traffic quality as a potential issue, because I know they have good traffic - assuming your base CPC which you specified in your campaign settings is competitive enough to win traffic from good placements.)
Also worth mentioning is that theOptimizer would be working with stats that are delayed by up to 2-4 hours. for this reason, it may be better to leave the automatic bid-changing to Outbrain, which of course has access to real-time up-to-the-second stats.
Rule 8: Change Section Bid to 70% of EPC
Considering data from: Last 7 Days
Run this rule every: Every 1 Hour
Notes: Similar idea as for the last rule, but applied to section CPC bids. Again, do not run this rule if you're running a campaign with the "Conversion" objective, where Outbrain is optimizing bids automatically already.
Again, this rule can be great if you have at least some well-converting sections with decent EPCs. If you don't, again it's probably because of your ads/lander/offers. If you have at least 1-2 decent ads with good performance, then wait until after you've cut most of the inferior ads, which should result in higher EPCs across sections, and THEN implement this rule.
Again, if you're not seeing decent EPC for ANY ad in ANY section, chances are it's your ads and/or landing pages and/or offers.
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theOptimizer Reporting
To see a list of changes that are implemented by theOptimizer's rules, choose "System Activity" from the left menu:
You can use the filters at the top to specify a date range, choose a type of entries (Rule, Manual, or List), items affected (Campaigns, Contents, Sections, etc.), and statuses (either Completed or Failed).
Clicking on column headings will allow you to sort the data.
At the bottom you'll find buttons for downloading the report in either CSV or Excel format. The note here is that doing so will only export entries on the current page. If you wish to export all the data in as few files as possible, change the number of rows from the default 10 to the maximum 1000, then download each page.
(Note: When you see "Widget" in the reporting, it's referring to the "Publisher in Outbrain.)
EDIT: @platinum knows theOptimizer from the inside out, and has kindly provided some very useful tips in his post here, including tips on how to combat Outbrain's data delays.
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Then - we wait for traffic to start. After that, we need to watch the stats and make some manual adjustments. That and more will be covered in part 4:
Outbrain Tutorial for Native Noobs - Part 4
Amy
Allow me to chime in and add some more suggestions in terms of how to create rules and tweak them to move 99% of the optimization to theOptimizer. 
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...culator-Inside
As Amy said above, the best way to set up rules, would be to run a a campaign without using automatic rules first, then analyze the data and figure out the best rules that fit your offer. However, if you don't want to spend much money on collecting data to create rules, the best approach would be to use the affiliate network insights. Simply input the offer insights on this calculator, then you should be able to estimate what the ideal thresholds would be for your campaign to break even.
Blocking Sections Rules:
Based on your offer performance after you have sent an initial amount of traffic to see how ti performs. Or take in consideration the performance insights you have about the offers from the affiliate network, you may see that your offer needs at least a minimum amount of landing page clicks to generate at enough conversions to break even, or maybe one conversion (amount of lp clicks for 1 conversion = total lp clicks to break even / number of conversions).
Example:
Say for the above offer, we need at least 76 landing page clicks to generate 4 conversions and get close to break even (-8% roi). So in this case, we might want to create a section blocking rule like the following:
A good way to overcome the reporting delays from Outbrain would be to replace Traffic Source Clicks with Tracker Clicks (campaign link visits), but when using Tracker Clicks I would recommend to slightly increase the threshold - e.g. from 30 to 50. This way if your campaign has received clicks from a web crawler or any other known bot (for which Outbrain won't charge), you make sure you're still in the equivalent of 30 traffic source clicks.
Bid Change Rules:
It is very important to be aware of the bid change limits per campaign that Outbrain has. So, with that being said, the less frequent you change bids, the better it is to go along with Outbrain's auto-optimization algorithm as well as bid change limits allocated for a campaign.
Outbrain Bidding Hierarchy
Campaign Level > Section Level > Ad Level (available only through API)
If I am correct, the section level bid will override campaign level bid, while Ad level bid will override both section and campaign level bids. So the ad level bid is the highest one in terms of ruling bids out. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Now back to change section bid rules.
Changing bids on the section level
You can set the bid to a fixed dollar amount or percentage of the EPC / Tracker EPC / Traffic Source EPC / EPV (earnings per view - GA) / EPS (earnings per session - GA). Or you can increase or decrease bids by a specific dollar amount percentage of the calculated metrics.
Please Note: EPC is the most accurate metric of the Earnings per Click as it is calculated based on the revenue reported by the tracker and number of clicks you paid for on Outbrain.
If your offer has already started converting and the conversions are coming from a group of sections with various EPC and ROI, when changing bids you want to include the EPC and ROI as conditions.
Example:
Section D, E, F, J have an EPC ranging from $0.4 - $0.8. While sections W, X, G, T have an EPC ranging from $1.6 to $2.3.
Being aware of those differences in terms of EPC ranges, it is best to isolate these ranges when setting bids on a percentage of the EPC, rather than including all of them under the same rule.
First range rule:
Second range rule:
Set both rules execution frequency to Run this rule every: 1 Hour. This way twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday 11am America / New York time the rule will set the bid to the specified percentages of the EPC.
Changing bids on the Ad level
Like in the section level rules, the same logic applies on the Ad level. But what we can do here is that if needed we can add the CPA metric into play to make sure that whenever we bid on the ad level we at least stay within our target cost per acquisition.
To wrap it up, when having campaigns set to auto-optimization on Outbrain (or any other sources), it is important to understand how their system plays around with bids based on the current bid. Like for instance, if we have a bid of $0.45 on the campaign level, Outbrain's algo will increase bids by maybe 150% or decrease them by 50% to find the sweet spot for the desired conversion goal with positive ROI. So when you understand this limit, you can play around with the bids following along with Outbrain's algo in order to avoid screwing their learning/testing phase.
Wow @platinum what an ingenious way of handling Outbrain's data delay issue!
And of course all the other tips are on point as well. I'm linking from the tutorial to your post.
Thank you so much for all the insight!
Amy
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