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
To streamline setup, create the Teads Universal Pixel and set up lower-funnel conversions in the Events Manager.
Place the pixel before launching the campaign to gather site data, improve performance, and avoid tracking issues. For GTM users, use our direct integration or contact us for assistance.
Place the pixel at least two weeks before the campaign goes live on the landing page for optimal performance.
Best practices for Campaign settings
Ensure that you select the correct advertiser for your campaign. 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 the total budget for all line items.
Please wait for 24 hours after pressing Go Live before analyzing the initial results.
Keep the frequency capping disabled to allow more flexibility for the Teads Buying Engine to optimize. Teads organically has a low frequency, and enabling this feature is not necessary to prevent user saturation.
Best practices for Line Item settings
Select the correct timezone.
Set default pacing to "Ahead." If pacing becomes an issue, switch to daily budget with ASAP mode.
Avoid day-parting.
Disable frequency capping; it is unnecessary due to the low frequency Teads delivery organically has.
Best practices for Creatives
It is recommended to use automatic creative optimization in your line items, and leverage as many creative variations as possible (5 or more recommended). This will provide more signals for Teads Ad Manager AI to optimize the performance of the campaign.
Recommended formats are Single Image and Single Video for better scale by gaining access to more publisher inventory, and cost efficiency via Automatic Positions.
Adapt your creative's CTA to the user experience on your landing page. A/B test different CTAs e.g. Buy Now and Learn More for best results.
Note that the Single Image format supports Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) technology, which can automatically test variations from up to 5 headlines, 5 images, and 5 call to actions (CTAs), to find the best performing combinations of your assets in real time.
For ad personalization, use dynamic title keywords. Contact us for text recommendations.
Avoid special characters to prevent creative blocking.
Best practices for targeting
To deliver optimal results, Teads Buying Engine algorithm uses its learning phase to deliver impressions to the widest audience possible, which is typically achieved by making more inventory available. TAM allows users to see the estimated number of reach and ad opportunities of a line item's targeting settings in the user UI. These totals will update in real time as targeting settings are applied. The higher this number, the higher the number of Ad Opportunities (a.k.a. inventory).
The recommended setting for all Clicks and Quality Traffic campaigns is "Smart" targeting for the best performance and cost efficiency. Smart targeting works best when only brand safety and location targeting are applied, without any additional contextual segments or audiences. Smart targeting typically representing 85% + of a country's avails.
Target cross-device without budget split.
Understanding that each campaign will have its own requirements, it is strongly recommended that the targeting applied does not reduce the available inventory below 30% (based on the Ad Opportunities). If the reach of a line item is below this 30% threshold, the first optimization to increase performance and delivery must always be opening up the targeting to include more inventory.
For campaigns leveraging contextual or audience targeting, it is recommended to A/B test this tactic, using a portion of the budget in a line item using Smart targeting only.
For campaigns targeting a specific location, consider extending the area targeted whenever possible for better results (e.g. expand from City to Metro, or use Region-level targeting).
Best practices for bidding
Teads Ad Manager's Middle Funnel solutions utilizes dynamic bidding to deliver competitive market pricing.
Set the appropriate max rate to ensure competitiveness. Contact us via Intercom for assistance.
During competitive periods, increase bid by 10-15% for a healthy win rate.
Choose the right bid strategy for your KPI, and aim for at least 50 visits/day for optimization.
If scale for CPC delivery is limited, consider switching to a CPM buying model.
Use Dynamic pricing for better outcomes and Fixed pricing impressions/clicks that have been specifically booked.
KPI | Buying model (Fixed or Dynamic) | Standard bid strategy | Outcome |
CPC | CPC, CPM | Minimize Cost per Click | Maximum delivery at a controlled cost per click |
Quality Traffic (Page views, time spent) | CPC, CPM | Optimize traffic quality* | Maximum delivery and quality visit optimization |
KPI | Buying model (Dynamic or fixed) | Advanced bid strategy | Outcome |
Clicks, CTR | CPM | Reach target CTR | Maximum delivery at a controlled CTR |
Cost per site visit | CPC, CPM | Reach target cost per visit | Maximum site visits at a controlled cost |
Recommendation for KPI target optimizations
Launch campaigns with minimize/optimize bidding. Avoid using advanced bidding strategies from the beginning of the campaign, to prevent delivery issues caused by overly aggressive early targets.
Monitor performance during the discovery period. After 2-3 days, analyze the performance. If performance is below expectations, switch to an advanced bidding strategy like Cost Per Visit or Reach Target CTR, using a moderate target value (+/- 10%). Increase bid by 50% and optimize gradually.
Avoid strict targets or low bids. Address pacing issues by adjusting targets or bids.
Pay attention to delivery during peak periods.
Best practices for lower funnel reporting conversions
Ensure that the correct lookback window is set for post-click and post-view conversions. The secondary conversions' lookback window now defaults to PC 7 / PV 1. However, the lookback window for the event View Content (Visit) remains unchanged at PC 1 / PV 0.
Best practices for Pacing and Performance
Check the auction tab to analyze scaling issues.
Ensure sufficient daily bid requests for desired scale.
Update creatives during long campaigns to avoid fatigue.
Identify underperforming sites using site-level reporting and exclude them.
Use consistent campaign time zone for accurate metrics.
If you have any questions or require further assistance regarding setup, pacing, or KPI performance, you can contact us through Intercom.