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Best Practices for Middle Funnel Campaigns

The following guidelines are intended to help you set up your middle funnel campaign optimally and achieve maximum performance.

Updated this week

Once you have familiarized yourself with the initial steps involved in setting up your Clicks or Quality Traffic campaign, you can further enhance your campaign's performance and streamline the setup process, by following our recommended best practices below:

Configure the Teads Universal Pixel from the Events Manager prior to campaign set-up

  • Configure your advertiser's Teads Universal Pixel from the Events Manager page, including all relevant lower-funnel conversion events, for more details here. For Google Tag Manager users, use the Teads Advertiser Pixel template available within the Community Template Gallery in GTM.

  • Place the pixel before launching the campaign will allow Teads to gather site data, improve performance, and avoid tracking issues once your campaign is active.

Configure your campaign to leverage the full power of Teads Ad Manager AI

Campaign Settings

  • Ensure that you select the correct advertiser for your campaign, and that it matches the advertiser associated with the Teads Pixel you intend to use. If the advertiser is not listed, please contact Teads via Intercom to have it added to the drop-down menu.

  • Make sure that the campaign budget includes (at minimum) the total aggregated budget for all line items.

  • Allow at least 24 hours after going live with your campaign before analyzing the initial results.

  • Keep the frequency capping disabled to allow flexibility for Teads Buying Engine to optimize. Teads Ad Manager is designed to deliver a low impression frequency organically to prevent users from experiencing ad saturation.

Line Item Settings

  • Ensure your campaign is using the desired time zone.

  • Set pacing Ahead. For line items experiencing delivery issues, consider switching this setting to a daily budget with ASAP mode.

  • Avoid day-parting. Web browsing habits can vary greatly from user to user, and limiting your campaign's delivery to specific hours could mean missing out on users that are likely to engage with your brand.

  • Keep the frequency capping disabled to allow more flexibility for the Teads Buying Engine to optimize. Teads Ad Manager is designed to deliver a low impression frequency organically to prevent users from experiencing ad saturation.

Targeting Settings

  • Ensure your campaign has sufficient scale to deliver positive results. Keeping a wide targeting strategy is key to achieving maximum performance, as this provides the Teads Buying Engine with more data to learn and optimize with, leading to better outcomes. For tips on how to ensure your campaign's reach is appropriate, refer to our targeting optimization guide.

  • Use Smart targeting for the best performance and cost efficiency in all Middle Funnel campaigns (i.e. only brand safety and location targeting applied, without any additional contextual segments or audiences). Smart targeting typically represents 85%+ of a country's ad opportunities.

  • Make sure ad opportunities are maintained around at least 30%. If the campaign's targeting causes the volume of ad opportunities to fall below 30%, the primary optimization strategy should be to open up targeting to include more inventory.

  • A/B test the intended targeting strategy for campaigns leveraging contextual or audience targeting, by using a portion of the budget in a line item using Smart targeting only.

  • Implement cross-device targeting without budget split.

  • Consider extending the area targeted whenever possible for better results for campaigns targeting a specific location (e.g. expand from City to Metro, or use Region-level targeting).

Creative

  • Mandatory: Utilize the Creative Editor for Performance templates.

  • Recommended formats: Use our best performing creative formats: Single Image & Single Video.

  • Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO): Enable DCO for Single Image formats to enhance performance.

    • Maximum Variations: Create up to 125 creative combinations by using:

      • Up to 5 images

      • Up to 5 titles

      • Up to 5 descriptions

      • Up to 5 CTAs

    • Recommended Variations: While 125 is the maximum, we recommend at least 3-5 variations.

    • CTA Recommendation: Begin with the Teads fixed CTA list to follow best practices. Custom CATA options can be added for specific messaging needs.

  • Creative Editor (Performance Formats & Social Ads) guidelines

    • Minimum Variations:

      • To drive impactful engagement, create at least 3-5 variations using different ad elements, such as images, titles, descriptions, CTAs, or format variations.

    • CTA Recommendation:

      • Use the Teads fixed CTA list for optimal performance and alignment with best practices.

      • Custom CTAs may be used for specific campaign requirements.

    • Line Item Creative Count:

      • Limit creatives to 5-15 per line item to avoid budget dilution.

      • A maximum of 20 creatives per line item and campaign is recommended to ensure optimal algorithm performance.

  • Additional recommendations:

    • Teads recommends setting a budget of $100 per creative per day.

    • Ensure Creative Optimization is enabled for the assigned creatives.

    • Use Dynamic title keywords to optimize and drive ad personalization in real-time

      • Contact us through Intercom for text recommendations

    • Avoid using special characters (e.g. &, %, etc) in the creative file or title name, as these may block the creative.

    • When testing variables, change only one element per version. For example, test 3 different images while keeping the same copy and CTAs. Alternatively, use the same images but test with different CTAs.

Bidding Strategies

  • Use bids that are competitive based on your targeting parameters and objectives. Higher bids will allow your campaign to bid on more ad opportunities without necessarily increasing your cost (Teads Ad Manager offers the option of using dynamic bids that work on a second-price auction model, so a winning bid only pays one cent more than the second highest bidder). Should you require help in determining the right bid for your line item, contact us via Intercom.

  • Monitor the delivery and clearing rates of your line items closely. It is common for line items to show a clearing rate that is equal or just below the max bid during the initial stages of a flight. The reason is because the buying algorithm is in the exploration phase during this period, which prioritizes buying inventory as it tries to identify the dimensions (e.g. publishers, format, devices, users, etc) that are most likely to deliver the intended objective.

  • Review the line item's impression funnel using the Auction section within TAM's campaign dashboard for more insights if the clearing price hasn't decreased. If this is not the case, it is likely that the max bid of your campaign is too low or not competitive enough.

For line items using an advanced bidding strategy with a specific KPI target, it is strongly recommended to enter bids that are at least 50% higher than they would be for the corresponding standard bidding strategy. Bids that are not in line with the KPI target typically result in delivery pacing issues.

Although delivery is non-guaranteed, Teads Ad Manager is able to guarantee that your target KPI will be achieved.

  • Cost Per Click: For campaigns with CPC goals, users have the option of using Teads Ad Manager's CPC buying model to ensure that the cost-per-click achieved remains in line with or below their specified goal.

  • Cost Per Visit: For campaigns with CPV goals, users can leverage the "Reaching Target Cost Per Visit" advanced bidding strategy.

Conversion Measurement

  • Ensure that the relevant events have been configured within the Pixel settings in the Events Manager page, and set the appropriate post-click and post-view look back windows, using the Funnel Analytics section in your line item bidding and optimization settings.

  • Note that the look back window for Visits and Quality Visits in Teads Ad Manager is a fixed value of 1 day post-click only. Conversion events have a default look back of 30 days post-click and 14 day post-view, and can be modified to be a value between 0 to 30 days.

Long-Flight Campaigns

To maintain optimal campaign performance over extended periods of activity, it is crucial to proactively anticipate various factors that could potentially lead to such a decline, including:

  • Ad fatigue: Over time, audiences may lose interest in the campaign which can result in reduced performance. To combat ad fatigue, it is recommended to refresh creatives with new imagery and/or text after running for several months or weeks.

  • Restricted audience size: Limiting your campaign to a narrow audience can lead to lower performance. Broadening your target audience enables Teads Ad Manager to reach more users and offer greater flexibility for optimization.

  • Seasonality effect: Seasonal trends, like holidays or special events, can significantly impact campaigns by increasing competition for media inventory. This heightened competition may reduce the availability of high-performing inventory or lead to higher costs, affecting campaign efficiency and overall costs.

Should you have any questions or require further assistance regarding setup, pacing, or KPI performance, you can contact us via Intercom.

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