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my campaign got budget capped in no time! (13)

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hi everybody!
nice to meet you all
this is my first thread in here so i hope somebody seees it hahah....
and that i post it in the right place :/
so... any way,
ive just launched a campaign short while ago and in no time, it spent all it budget (=capped)
i dont understand why sometimes is happening and how to avoid it and how to optimise in this situation.
did i do something wrong? is this mean i should give up the offer? it got 1 conversion but for super bad CPA...
id love to hear you out

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Yes, that can happen.

If you provide some more information meaning: what kind of traffic, which geo, which traffic source and bid model --> people may be able to help you.

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you are right! tnx for aligning me
the campaign is in outbrain, geo: IL, fully automatic bid model.
im pretty weak in proffesional campaigns terms (aka: CTR, CPC etc...)
what other data do i need to look at now?

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High bids, low daily budget, such things can easily lead to these situations.

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ok
daily budget was 150$
CPC that i gave was 0.15 , payout is 30$
what should i have done different? how do i move on from here?
what is the meaning of this situation reg. this offer? what can i learn from this reg. my other/ next campaigns?

tnx for all your help!!!

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Well twinaxe put it quite clear.

Start with a lower bid and define a daily budget that you are willing to spend.

I don't know outbrain.... Some traffic source allow you to set rules for blocking zones/placements by spend, roi and so on.

If outbrain does not have such things and you cannot monitor your campaign then you might need to invest in a tool that is doing the blacklisting for you.

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tnx!!!
what bid would you put in this campaign?
do you know a tool that is integrating with outbrain and doing balcklisting?
btw, in this campaign case, i didnt get any "spam" publishers spent budget on, it all went to the big publishes (the ones that i usually get sales from).

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There are several follow alongs for native in this forum. Just read some and for sure you will find answers.

Cannot help you for your bid. But apparently it was too high or offer just converted too bad (depending on how you want see it).

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You could also ask for a rough WL of good sites to test if the offer has potential or not.

Or you could set a tighter targeting to control the spend a bit better.

Btw, what's average bid for your targeting and how did you decide to run the offer?

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Outbrain will usually spend your budget as fast as it can each day... if it capped almost instantly that's a good sign, just means you have a good bid and have room to lower it...

Outbrain's "official" documents recommend starting at $200 a day and a high bid and then lowering the bid by 3 cents per day until your campaign is taking 8+ hours to cap, then you know you're at the "right" bid for your targeting.

I don't like spending $200 on a super high bid though personally, so I'll usually start at $20 and a high bid, then lower the bid after it caps, then spend another $20, then lower it again, and then once its a bit lower I'll raise the budget. James Van Elswyck called this "revving the engine", and it works well on Outbrain.

If you only got one conversion at a super bad cpa, chances are the problem is either a) the offer, b) the ads, c) the landing page, or d) the bid is just way too high still and once you lower it the cpa will go down.

Outbrain has a little bit of bad traffic, but its not enough to account for poor performance, and, like you said below, most of your traffic came from big publishers.

Keep us updated on how things progress!

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Tnx for your answer @twinaxe!
i will defenitly ask outbrain for WL!!! great idea!
what do you mean by tighter targeting? you mean, exclude locations? specifically in Israel , the audience is pretty small so i was afraid to remove areas inside the country.
usually for bids i put:
desktop CPC 0.3
mobile CPC 0.15
but lately i see its nor really working for me
i decided on offers from checking out ads with spy tool
and entering to the big publishers and browsing inside also.
do you have any other ideas for me?
tnx for all your help!!!!

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wooooowwww!!!! what a great tip!!!!
i will totally try it today!
btw, yesterday i've lowered the CPC to 0.075 and today i woke up with 1 sale for way lower CPC.
so far, the spending speed seems pretty normal!
btw,
when you wrote this:
"If you only got one conversion at a super bad cpa, chances are the problem is either a) the offer, b) the ads, c) the landing page, or d) the bid is just way too high still and once you lower it the cpa will go down."

i obviously know the marketing meaning behind this, i come from FB world, there is was easy for me to spot the weak spot.
now i use volume as a tracker and i dont really know what data (and where) can tell me if the issue is a,b,c or d. can you maybe clarify this in 2 words for me?
hahah.... im a newbie

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The only way to tell is to just split-test

Well, if you are running ads that are similar to someone else's you know they should be decent, and same thing with landing pages... beyond that though you just gotta split-test a variety of images and headlines, and a variety of landing pages, and see which ones do well

Offer is most important element of course though...


PS You should definitely be passing conversions to Outbrain... as long as you're doing that you can basically just use the Outbrain dashboard to look at the performance of the ads, as well as times of day, regions, devices, etc

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