This guide is designed to help you, as a retailer, create and manage effective display auction campaigns for your advertisers. By following these steps, you can maximize the visibility and impact of your advertisers' products and offers on your website.
What are Onsite Display Auction Campaigns?
Powered by advanced machine learning technology for retail, Auction Campaigns optimize ad delivery to ensure that the most relevant ads are shown to shoppers at the right time.
This is achieved through a real-time bidding (RTB) mechanism and a first-price auction model, allowing your advertisers to bid dynamically and pay according to the bid.
Getting Started
Pre-Launch
Before introducing the Auction Buy Type to your monetization program, there are several strategic decisions you need to make. Working closely with your Criteo team will ensure a smooth and successful launch. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you through the process.
Floor Price: You’ll set a specific minimum CPM for Auction line items separate from the minimum CPM for Preferred Deals. Once determined, Your Criteo team will update your rate card to reflect the new minimums.
You can input a specific minimum CPM for each format on each of your page types – for instance, the Flagship unit can have different a CPM minimum on the Category and Search page types.
Additionally, category premiums may be applied at Level 1 and 2. This premium will be added to the initial CPM and will apply to all child categories.
If the Flagship unit for Category pages has a minimum CPM of $15 and you set a $5 category premium to the Apparel category, brands and advertisers cannot bid below $20 for a Flagship unit on an apparel page.
Available Buy Types: You may choose which buy types to enable for your monetization program including Sponsorships, Preferred Deals or Auction (you have the ability to enable all or just 1). Consider how you’d like to structure the available buy types for your monetization program and how you’ll notify advertisers of the changes. Or any changes you may want to make in the future that would require a transition plan.
Campaign Management: Ensure that the users responsible for campaign setup and management – whether Criteos, internal teams, or advertisers themselves – are prepared for the upcoming workflow changes.
Creating an Onsite Display Auction Campaign
Pre Campaign Setup
Build an Onsite Creative
Under the Demand side of your Commerce Yield account, navigate to Shared Library and select Creatives.
Click on +Creative.
Select the media type and page type.
The next step in building a creative is to enter the name of the creative in the Creative Name field. Make sure to name the creative something easily recognizable in the Creative Library.
Then, search for the brand featured in the advertisement in the Brand field.
Next, in the Design Your Creative section under Images, upload the creative or image that will be used in the advertisement.
When you upload your image, you’ll have the option to crop it to fit the required specs for your desired creative unit. The dimensions differ for mobile and desktop.
You will be able to preview the image/creative on the right-hand side of the screen.
Create the ad once you are satisfied with the preview.
Campaign Setup for Auction Buy Type
To create a campaign, click on the Campaigns tab within the platform and follow these steps:
Click on the +Campaign button.
For Campaign Type select Onsite Display.
And, for Buy Type select Auction.
Auction serves ads on inventory not already reserved and with a lower minimum bid compared to other buy types.
Preferred Deals target shoppers based on their shopping history and context. Pay when an ad impression is served (CPM).
Sponsorships serves ads to 100% of shoppers. A Sponsorship guarantees that no other ads will serve in the placement during the selected dates. Sponsorships are billed on a flat rate, and prices vary by retailer and targeted inventory.
Name the campaign and decide on the Attribution and Advanced settings. For more in-depth explanations behind the attributions, please see Attribution.
Click on Next: the campaign is now ready for you to add the Line Items.
Line Item Set Up for Auction Buy Type
Once in the Line Item creation page, the first step is to name the line item; enter a name that will help you identify the line item within your campaign or in a report.
Proceed with setting the start and end date for the line item.
End Date: The line item will stop serving ads and the status will change to Ended on that precise date.After creating the line item, you will be able to input the budget for the line item.
Once the budget is selected, you can then set up pacing options to help you control the budget spend pace:
Even Pacing: The line item will spend evenly until it hits the line item’s end date and budget.
As soon as possible: The line item will spend as soon as it can until it hits the line item’s budget.
Following the pacing settings, you can adjust the frequency capping. Frequency capping lets you limit the number of times the ad will appear to the same shopper.
Don’t set a frequency cap
Set a frequency cap for a certain number of impressions per day or user session on the website.
A frequency cap can be set at either the line item or campaign level. By setting a frequency cap on a line item, you will not be able to set a frequency cap at the campaign level.
Once your budget and pacing settings are configured, the next step is to add the products. There are 2 options within the platform to search for the products :
Search by relevant keyword using the Search Account Catalog Module or press the search button to make all products appear.
Search by Product IDs using the Find Matches by Product IDs module by entering the UPC, MPN, or SKU ID.
Once the product or products pull in, make sure each product is selected and that the corresponding box on the right-hand side is checked. Once selected, you can scroll down and manually input both positive and negative keywords (see keyword section for more information).
Next, you will select the page type the ads will serve on. One page type can be selected per line item. The page types listed are reflective of what is available for targeting. You may be able to select Homepage, Search, Category, Order Confirmation Page, etc.
For Search pages, you must enter the keywords on which you want your line item to serve.
For Category pages, you must select the categories on which you want your line item to serve.
To serve on the Search page, enter at least one search term (keyword) you want to serve on in the Keywords text box. Words or short phrases are both acceptable search terms.
You can also include relevant suggestions from Recommended Keywords on the right by clicking the keyword or the Add button. Use the Add All button to add all recommendations to your line item. This helps you quickly and accurately improve keyword coverage.
The keyword model uses natural language processing to identify the roots of your keywords and serves ads on any search query that contains those roots. Learn more about keywords in the Keyword Section.
Select the category page(s) you want the Line Item to serve on. One category must be selected at minimum for a line item to serve.
Example: If you select appliances > small appliances > small appliance sets, "appliance" is the category level 1, "small appliances" is the category level 2, etc.
By selecting a category, any child pages within that category are automatically selected by default.
Example: If you select appliances > small appliances, all the child pages of small appliances are selected by default.
Please review the child pages within the selected category to ensure accuracy.
Remember that submitted categories should be relevant to the products you have targeted in the Line Item and that you are strongly advised against adding irrelevant categories.
Choose the Creatives and Products you would want to display.
After choosing the creatives, you’ll have the opportunity to layer on more targeting.
There are three (3) advanced targeting options:
Select Audiences – your ad will display to custom audiences you create in the audience builder.
Add to Cart – your ad will display to shoppers who have added specific products to their shopping carts
Store IDs – your ad will display to shopper who are visiting specific stores on the retailer’s website.
Finally, you will enter your bid total for the line item. This is the CPM you will be using to try to win the inventory in the auction.
When you go to enter your bid, you will see a minimum bid floor. That is the lowest price that you can bid.
Remember, other brands may be bidding on the same inventory as you, so you will not want to stick to the minimum bid price if you want to have a good chance at winning the inventory.
Minimum bid prices will vary from retailer to retailer, so try to plan accordingly and know that bid prices that work on one retailer may not work on others.
After you’ve entered the bid amount, click next in the bottom right side of the page to move to the review process.
You will be redirected to the review page to finalize the line item
All line item settings can be adjusted from the review page either before launch or at any point during the campaign.
Once all the settings are configured to meet your needs, select the Submit button at the bottom right of the page to activate the line item!