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Volume to a site/widget decreases after bidding up (7)

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Hey ya'll.

I can't be the only one who noticed this phenomena,
At times, going out of the marks of "mere coincidence", after bidding up on a site/widget - the volume ends up decreasing. This is happening way too often for me.
A possible explanation?

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Just to make sure we're on the same page... the volume goes down when you INCREASE the bid, right? Because the thread title says "bidding down", then in the text you mention "bidding up".

I will assume that you meant "increasing" the bid, as the other option wouldn't make sense anyways

Two options come to my mind :

1. competition: when increasing the bid you get more clicks initially, then competition notices and they increase the bid too and take "your" traffic.
2. algo: this is CPC bidding, right? When you increase the bid, you get more exposure but the overall CTR goes down which translates to less revenue for the network per 1000 impressions and the algo pushes you down. This would signal a problem with creatives, they are not strong enough.

What happens if you set the bid back to what it was before?

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Lol, the paradoxical nature of it, that even I misnamed it, can you help rename the title to "bidding up" PLEASE?

This is happening pretty much on the same day though, and even when bidding up 2 cents (0.027 > 0.029) on the SmartBid in Taboola, how are competitors so quick to react (and how does 2 cents make a difference) ?! I heard about such competitions but never understood how it worked.

Yep, CPC. This is quite crazy, would CTR decline so much and offset everything to have the bid increase not pay itself? And then there's still the old traffic which still presumably remained with the same CTR...? And remember, this is me bidding up on a single site, that means there's no other traffic in the mix there when bidding up. Really curious!

Sometimes volume would come back up to previous levels (however hard to tell correlation vs. causation), and sometimes it remains low until after some time (maybe) volume increases back up

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Thread renamed

They might be running some auto-optimization tool that steps in really quickly.

I'm surprised this is caused by such a small increase to be honest. But one never knows, there might be competitors bidding really close to what you are. It's really hard to say what's causing this, my bet would be that the increase affects the algo that changes the delivery and results in the overall decrease.

Let's tag some more experiences native people in here... @jack_l @platinum ... any idea what could cause this guys?

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Well I imagine @platinum can give the actual scientific/logistical reasons behind it... but I would phrase it as Taboola's algo just being goofier than heck... and a lot of stuff not making sense with it...

There's so many variables at play with the smartbid algo that changing a site bid like that is probably the equivalent of moving a lever in a giant clock where god knows what effect it can have...

Wish I could be more help @roiter ! But if you can tame the Taboola Smartbid seas you're a better sailor than me!

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What's that tool could be? Any idea?

I'd love that

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@roiter123 are you noticing this happening with random widgets or in general and the above is just an example?

In any case, I have noticed the following:

1. On some specific verticals, it is pretty hard to get stable traffic. Mainly because mainstream publishers don't like to show some kind of ads and the remaining ones will end up in huge competition (even though the avg bid might be low).

2. Sometimes dropping the bid too low can easily throttle the delivery from a specific publisher/site. And in this case I'm under the impression it has to do with a specific Low Bid + Low vCTR (with this last one probably caused by the low bid). If this is might be the case, then it's important to avoid dropping bids too low. In your screenshot I see that you have bumped the bid up, then back down (probably from one day to another).

3. As of lately, placing a high bid doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to get more traffic if the bid is not combined with the budget. Sometimes someone who is running with higher budgets but not higher bids, gets more traffic.

4. I guess you've noticed campaigns considerable daily budget campaigns not spending even 20% or less of their daily budget. In such cases it is usually a combination of low campaign bid and low vCTR. In other words, the campaign isn't able to get exposure to enough publishers right from the beginning, and due to the low bid the overall vCTR is too low to peak up fast enough without going in some ugly red zone.


Honestly it could be hundreds of reasons why a campaign doesn't get much traffic, or unstable floods of traffic. However, I believe the above are most likely the main reasons as we usually tend to ignore them.

Ask your rep if they can hep you with vertical-specific insights from what they see. Simple stats like Avg. CPC and vCTR should be enough to have a rough understanding where you stand against your competitors.

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