Tying Advertiser Goals to Campaign Optimization

Advertiser Goals and Campaign Optimization: How They Work Together

Advertisers can come to you with many different goals. Alternatively, they may just tell you what they need in general terms — more sales, traffic, etc. In terms of being able to optimize toward a goal, the more precise it is, the better. Your ability to optimize depends on the tactic.

Examples of Goals and Optimization Alignment

A display ad has the goal of increasing reach and impressions. The goal would fall into awareness. Optimizing toward this objective would involve ensuring that the targeting doesn’t narrow the audience too much. The ad’s content should focus on making viewers “aware” of the brand rather than trying to get them to purchase something immediately.

A social display ad has the goal of clicks, so optimization setup would align with gaining this engagement. The results wouldn’t meet the advertiser’s goal if the ad were inadvertently optimized for reach. Instead, they’d likely see a much higher CPC (cost per click).

An OTT ad’s goal is views, so you’d want to optimize for completions. Not aligning these two things could result in many impressions but few view completions.

It’s also important to discuss optimizations for social media ads. Each platform has specific KPIs (key performance indicators), such as impressions, reach, clicks, views, completions and leads.

For programmatic ad types (display, geofencing, etc.), optimization typically involves either clicks or completions.

Best Practices for Aligning Advertiser Goals and Optimization

The first thing to keep in mind is that advertiser goals and optimizations are connected but not the same. The goal is what your advertiser hopes will happen with a campaign, and optimization describes how the ad is set up to achieve this goal.

You have to start with what the advertiser expects. This involves asking them questions about their ideal goals for an ad and what success means to them. At the same time, you should be discussing messaging and CTAs. All these things must be working together for the best results.

Let’s use a remodeling company as an example. They want more form completions on their quote request page. They would identify this as a conversion, but people must reach this page before this secondary objective can occur.

An ad would need to drive people to this area of their website, so a click is what you’d actually be optimizing for. It’s not the end goal, but it’s the step needed before a form completion can happen.

Then, you’d need to determine what messaging or visuals will drive clicks. Some options could be:

• Customers’ ratings, which demonstrate social proof
• Before and after photos for inspiration
• Specific promos for percentages off if someone requests a consultation

The content of the ad is critical to optimizing it for clicks to eventually meet the advertiser’s goal of more quote request conversions.

Advertiser Goals and Optimization Mismatches May Be the Root of an Objection

If you’re working with a new advertiser, one objection they may have to investing more in digital advertising is that it didn’t work. They may have launched ads, but the performance was poor. Much of the time, this is because of misalignment between goals and optimization.

Some agencies or other digital ad sellers don’t even broach this with customers. They simply take their money and set up ads generically regardless of goals or optimization capabilities.

In these cases, CPC can get expensive, and the quality of the clicks may be substandard. Ads that should have significant reach could fail to achieve this goal because the platform optimizes for clicks.

If this is a barrier and pain point, explain in simple terms why goals and optimization must work in parallel. The fact that you’re expressing and explaining this could help overcome this hurdle.

Your Digital Advertising Technology Impacts Goals and Optimization, Too

Ad setup and optimization also depend on your digital advertising technology or solutions. Not all will enable optimization. There may be limitations, or it could be something that gets automatically checked and never explicitly configured.

The best platforms and services strategically enable optimization. Everything about the system focuses on supporting the ads’ performance. If your current solution has gaps, evaluate how these impact ad success and, ultimately, renewals.