How do I create an advertising campaign?
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Advertising formats
How to create a Push Notification or In-Page Push campaign
How to create a OnClick (Popunder) campaign
How to create a Video Pre-Roll campaign
How to create an Instant Text Message campaign
Pricing models
How to create a CPC campaign (Push Notification, Video Pre-Roll and ITM)
How to create a smartCPA campaign (Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder), Video Pre-Roll and ITM)
How to create a smartCPM campaign (Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder) and Skim)
How to create a CPM campaign (all advertising formats)
Let us introduce you to our brand-new campaign creation form. Now, it has 4 main sections that contain several settings to configure your campaign properly, and one of the important sections is ‘Campaign Summary’, which is located on the right side of the screen. This field has general information about the settings of your campaign according to the data that you put in all those 4 pages:
1. General
In this section, which is an essential one for campaign creation, you can (see the screenshot below):
- Type in a Name of your campaign;
- Select an Ad Format you want to run;
- Choose Feed for your ads. Feed refers to a category of your offer. If your offer is good to go on both available feeds, choose ‘All’, and you will receive all of our network’s traffic;
- Select an offer/website/product’s Vertical that you are going to promote (if you do not know the exact vertical of your offer/website/product, just choose ‘Default’). This way, your campaign will be receiving traffic that’s most relevant to your offer’s vertical, and, as a result, it is more likely to good results;
- Provide a Target URL (a link) to your offer/website/product;
- Upload creatives/add extra format-specific settings (for Banner, Push Notifications, Video and Instant Text Message).
Note: fields marked with an asterisk (*) on all pages are obligatory to be completed. You will not be able to start your campaign if at least one of them is empty.
2. Pricings
This section is for pricing and budget planning. Here you are able to:
- Choose a Pricing Model of your campaign (more information about our pricing models can be found here);
- Set a Geo/Country of targeting and choose a Bid/Price (all relevant bids for different ad formats are available in ‘Traffic Inventory’ for registered users only).
- What’s more, here you can choose a pre-set multi-country targeting by clicking on one of the settings shown on the screenshot below (‘WW’ - for all available countries, ‘Europe’ - European countries only, ‘Asia’ - Asian countries, and so on). On the right side, you will also see a pre-set bid that you can click on to choose it as your campaign’s cost.
- You can set bid for each Geo (available only with SmartCPM & CPM)
Note that multi-targeting pre-sets are currently available on CPM and smartCPM pricing models only.
If you want to know about relevant bids, but you have not registered an account yet, you can contact our Support Team via live-chat that is available in the bottom right corner of the page.
3. Set Frequency Capping for impressions and clicks. It refers to how many times (Frequency - times) your ad will be shown to the same user during a certain period of time (Capping - in hours). For example, 3/24 Frequency Capping for impressions means that a single user (when you choose user-based frequency) will be shown your ad 3 times in a row in the course of 24 hours;
What is more, you can select which type of 'Frequency' you would like to apple for your campaign's activity. Here you can see the three main types:
(1) User-based frequency capping: it defines how often your ad will be displayed on a publisher's website to an individual user at a given period of time, and it's based on a cookie matching. It is set by default;
(2) Device-based frequency capping: it is based on how many times an ad will be shown to a user with a signle unique device ID;
(3) IP-based frequency capping: here you can set how many times an ad will be shown to a user(s) with the same IP.
You can read more about various types of Frequency Capping here.
4. Set your Daily Campaign Budget and Total Campaign Budget. Use these fields if you want your campaigns to stop after they have spent a certain amount of $$$.
- For example, if you have set your daily budget to $30, and your total budget to $90, it means that your campaign will be automatically paused once it’s spent $30 in one single day. Then, after your campaign’s total expenses reached $90 (in this case, it’d have been running for 3 days in a row), it will be stopped and acquire ‘Complete’ status.
- If your campaign has stopped receiving traffic due to reaching it Daily Budget or Total Budget, you can either increase your campaign’s budget to restart it, or leave these fields empty (they’re empty by default!);
5. Set a Test Budget and other test settings (only for CPC (Except CPC with Banner) and SmartCPA pricing models).
3. Targetings
This page helps you to set specific targeting settings so that your campaign is getting only the most suitable traffic for your offer. You can either include a certain targeting (it is in ‘include’ mode by default’), or exclude it from your campaign’s traffic delivery by clicking on ‘Exclude’ switcher 
so that it turns red:
- Connection Type (‘3G’ - only mobile carrier traffic, ‘Wi-Fi’ - only traffic from devices connected to Wi-Fi, ‘All’ - both kinds of traffic);
- OS types (Mobile, Desktop, or Other), OSs (Android, iOS, etc.), OS versions;
- Device Types (Phone, Tablet, Other) and Devices (applicable to iOS devices only);
- Mobile ISP (carrier) (only for 3G connection type);
- Browsers and Browser language. We recommend setting a ‘Browser language’ targeting if you need to receive traffic from users who speak a certain language, or it you’re targeting a country where there is more than one common language spoken;
- State and City targetings. Here you can choose to target only specific states and/or cities in a chosen country. Note that a country needs to be set in 'Pricings' first;
- Proxy/Not proxy. If you choose ‘Proxy’ option, you will receive traffic from both users with genuine IPs and those who are masking their real IP addresses and using another country’s IP instead. ‘Not proxy’ option allows you to get traffic only from first-hand IP addresses. ‘All’ settings will get you both kinds of users.
4. Zones & Additional
Last, but not the least. This page allows to:
- Add zones (‘Zone Limitation’ field) that you want to Include (let your campaign work only within these zones) or Exclude (your campaign will not work on the zones, but on all others). Click on
switch to exclude these zones;
2. Set campaign schedule: note, that our platform is working according to EST time zone. If you want your campaign to work during a specific period of time, you should calculate the time zone of a geo you are running your campaign on;
3. Select the ad delivery method (for accurate tests and for more correct stats we recommend leaving these settings as they are);
4. Choose Anti-Adblock Zones and RTB traffic (third-party traffic, not from our direct Publishers).
After all the steps are complete, you can go through your campaign’s overall settings once again by looking at ‘Campaign Summary’ section on the right side of your page. This is quite convenient and saves your time. This section is divided into 4 parts, according to the ‘Create Campaign’ sections:
Note: if you are not ready to launch your campaign, you can save it as draft.
Do not forget to tick the Quality Guidelines compliance field before starting the campaign.
How to create a Push Notification or In-Page Push campaign
A user subscribes to receive Push Notifications on a Publisher's website. Once a user is subscribed, they will receive a push notification ad that of an icon, creative, title and a short description. By tapping on a notification, a user is redirected to your advertising campaign’s landing page/target URL.
In order to create a Push Notifications campaign, go to the ‘General’ section and select ‘Push Notification’ on the ‘Ad Format section’ (as it is shown on the screen).
User Activity
The next important step of creating a Push notification campaign is setting the ‘User Activity’ level:
In this section, you can set user activity levels for the push traffic that is going to be sent to your campaign. We recommend creating 3 separate campaigns for each user activity level to see what works best for your offer: one for ‘High’, a second one for ‘Medium’, and a third one for ‘Low’ &’ Remnant’. In general, ‘User Activity’ level refer to the period of time that has passed since a user has subscribed to receive notifications on a Publisher’s website. Each of the levels corresponds to the following periods (you can also access this information by clicking on a ‘?’ sign next to this setting):
- ‘High’ - a user has been subscribed for less than 3 days;
- ‘Medium’ - a user has been subscribed for 4-10 days;
- ‘Low’ - a user has been subscribed for more than 10 days;
- ‘Remnant - a user has been subscribed for more than 61 days.
In this way, targeting only ‘High’-ly engaged users will allow you to set a higher bid and get push traffic of higher quality than usual, whereas targeting ‘Low’ and ‘Remnant’ traffic at a low cost will allow you to buy a lot of remnant traffic in bulk.
Overall, this setting helps you to test out how effective your campaign/offer campaign will be in different settings and, thus, it will help to further optimize your campaigns.
InPage Push
In order to increase Push traffic efficiency, we are boosting your Push Notifications campaigns with the InPage Push Traffic type.
The main benefit of the InPage Push traffic is that in-page engages users that are browsing Publishers' websites in the real-time. Moreover, InPage is compatible with all operating systems, so you're able to target iOS users as well.
In order to enable InPage push traffic on your campaign, find the ‘InPage Push’ section when creating a Push Notification campaign and click ‘Allow InPage Push traffic’. If you would like to create a standalone InPage advertising campaign, choose a flag ‘Allow only InPage Push traffic’.
Creative settings
Description, Title, Icon and Creative are the required creatives for a Push Notification campaign (the same goes for InPage push campaigns, but it doesn’t have a creative (bigger image)). The text line boxes allow 30 symbols for the title and 40 symbols for the description.
Further, you will have to upload icon and creatives images, and use scaling (1) and cropping (2) tool to get the desired result (see the screenshot below). To crop an original image, upload it first and then scale and select an area you’d like to keep as an icon/creative for your push campaign.
Please note: InPage Push ads do not support large creatives (banners).
By clicking on ‘?’ icon on the ‘Upload Icon Image’ format requirements for icons and creatives will appear. For an icon, allowed formants include .jpg, .png, minimum width and height 192x192, max. size 200 KB. For a creative, requirements are .jpg, .png format-wise, minimum width and height 360х180, max. size 720 KB.
How to create a OnClick (Popunder) campaign
Popunder and Skim campaigns are created similarly. You do not need any creatives to run Popunder or Skim campaigns. All that is needed is a Target URL that leads to a (pre-)landing page or directly to an offer/product you would like to promote. Then, after a user has clicked on a certain element on a Publisher’s website, a Popunder window leading to your campaign’s URL is automatically opened in an additional window or a tab.
To create a Popunder campaign, you need to select ‘OnClick (Popunder)’ ad format and put your target URL leading to an offer/product to be promoted in the ‘Target URL’ field.
Further, when you set a bid (‘Pricings’ section (1)) for your Popunder campaign, you will be able to use pre-set bids (2), as shown on the screenshot below, that will allow you to choose to target countries that have got the same minimum CPM rate.
How to create a Skim campaign
To create a Skim campaign, you need to select ‘Skim’ ad format and put your target URL leading to an offer/product to be promoted in the ‘Target URL’ field.
Further, when you set a bid (‘Pricings’ section (1)) for your Skim campaign, you will be able to use pre-set bids (2), as shown on the screenshot below, that will allow you to choose to target countries that have got the same minimum CPM rate.
Vertical (‘Targetings’)
After you have set both ‘General’ and ‘Pricings’ sections, head to ‘Targetings’, where you will see another peculiar setting that’s only available for Skim campaigns - that’s ‘Vertical’ targeting option. Here you can either select or exclude website types you would like to receive Skim traffic from.
Last but not least is that Skim campaigns allow you to track what website vertical you receive traffic from by using {source} token. Implement this token when you configure postback, and you’ll receive this information on your tracker’s/affiliate network’s side.
How to create a Video Pre-Roll campaign
Go to ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), and choose ‘Video’ in Ad Format (2).
Next, you need to upload your video creative.
Please choose a video file (1) that is compliant with technical specifications listed below. Take into account that a skip offset (2) (a time period after which a user can skip a video ad) is always 5 seconds. Afterwards press “Next step” in order to continue creating your campaign.
You can always access a list of requirements by clicking on a ‘?’ question mark in the ‘Upload Your Video’ section.
Make sure your file meets the above requirements before uploading it.
After that, you can also decide on what pricing model you will be running your campaign. Go to Pricings page (1) and choose the price model (2). Video Pre-Rolls are available on CPC, CPM and SmartCPA models. (More information about our different pricing models that are available on our platform you can find in ‘Pricing models’ section of our F.A.Q. for Advertisers.)
Further, when you set a bid (‘Pricings’ section (1)) for your Video Pre-roll campaign, you will be able to use pre-set bids (2), as shown on the screenshot below, that will allow you to choose to target countries that have got the same minimum CPM rate.
Once you have saved or started your video campaigns, a video creative will be automatically uploaded and processed by our system. Kindly note that it may take some time for your video to be transcoded (usually no more than 10 minutes). You will receive an email when it has been processed by our system, which means that your Video Pre-Roll ad is all ready to go.
How to create an Instant Text Message campaign
Go to ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), and choose ‘Instant Text Message’ in Ad Format (2).
Content Settings
Next, you will need to upload your creative (that’s the text of the actual message).
Instant Text Message/Mobile Dialog Ad campaigns are easy to set up. Here you have to pay attention to ‘Content Settings’ page, where you can type in your instant text message’s title and its message text:
Please mind that ‘Instant Text Message’ field cannot contain more than 30 symbols (1), whereas ‘Text of message’ allows you to include up to 40 symbols (2) in your message.
On the right side of ‘Content Settings’ you can see a preview of your Instant Text Message ad, and there you can also see how exactly your ad will look like.
After that, you can decide on what pricing model you will be running your campaign. Go to Pricings page (1) and chose the price model (2). Instant Text Message are available on CPC, CPM and SmartCPA models.
What’s more, when you set a bid (‘Pricings’ section (1)) for your Instant Text Message campaign, you will be able to use pre-set bids (2), as shown on the screenshot below, that will allow you to choose to target countries that have got the same minimum CPM rate.
How to create a CPC campaign (Push Notification, Video Pre-Roll and ITM)
In order to create a CPC campaign, go to the ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), ‘General’ section (2) and choose Push Notification, Video Pre-Roll or ITM in Ad Format (3).
Switch to the ‘Pricing’ section (1) and select CPC pricing model (2).
Countries & Bid
After that, find the ‘Countries & Bid’ (5) section. Here you are supposed to select countries to be targeted. If you are interested in traffic volumes or average and maximum bids, we highly recommend you to use the ‘Traffic Inventory’ (6) tool. This tool calculates the daily traffic amount available according to the campaign settings, and selected targeting options. The data is based on the previous day's traffic performance.
In the ‘Countries’ field (7) select a country you would like to target in your campaign. Note, that for CPC pricing model it is possible to add only 1 country for a campaign. Set a click cost for your campaign in the ‘Click Cost’ (8) field on the right. To set a competitive click cost, familiarize yourself with data in the ‘Traffic Inventory’ or contact your personal manager in order to get recommendations. The minimum CPC for all GEOs is $0.001.
Next step is to set frequency capping (9). The 'frequency capping' determines how often (Frequency) ad will be displayed on a publisher's website per individual user/IP/device at a given period of time (Capping). On a CPC campaign you can choose the frequency capping of impressions and clicks as well.
CPC Test Settings
Kindly note that if you wish to run your campaigns on CPC pricing model, you need to set test settings at the bottom of the page for such campaigns first:
- Test Budget (12) is the amount of funds that will be deducted from you if the cost of produced clicks won’t cover expenses for the tested traffic.
This can happen in case your creative has a low CTR or low CPC (for CPC). The higher your Test Budget is, the more zones and traffic you will be able to test.
- Test impressions limit per zone (13) - this option excludes zones from the test that don’t provide a single click for a fixed volume of impressions.
How to create a smartCPA campaign (Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder), Video Pre-Roll and ITM)
If you would like to create a SmartCPA campaign, go to the ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), ‘General’ section (2) and choose Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder), Video Pre-Roll or ITM in Ad Format (3).
After that, switch to the ‘Pricings’ (4) section and select SmartCPA pricing model (5).
Take into account that if you choose SmartCPA pricing model you have to set postback integration between Clickadu and your tracker/affiliate network (6). Ready-to-use Postback URL for the most commonly used trackers can be found in ‘Tracking’ section of our platform (follow the link to the article about this section to learn more).
Countries & Bid
After that, find the ‘Countries & Bid’ section. Here you are supposed to select countries to be targeted. If you are interested in traffic volumes or average and maximum bids, we highly recommend you to use the ‘Traffic Inventory’ (7) tool. This tool calculates the daily traffic amount available according to the campaign settings, and selected targeting options. The data is based on the previous day's traffic performance.
In the ‘Countries’ field (8) select a country you would like to target in your campaign. Note, that for SmartCPA pricing model it is possible to add only 1 country for a campaign. Set a conversion cost for your campaign in the ‘Conversion Cost’ (9) field on the right. Conversion cost depends on your offer payout and should equal approximately 60-70% of your payout.
SmartCPA Test Settings
Kindly note that if you wish to run your campaigns on SmartCPA pricing model, you need to set test settings at the bottom of the page for such campaigns first:
- Test Budget (10) is the amount of funds that will be deducted from you if the cost of produced conversions won’t cover expenses for the tested traffic.
This can happen in case your offer does not get any conversions at all, or if the cost of the received conversions is lower than the price of the traffic that has been tested. In general, the higher your Test Budget is, the more zones and traffic you will be able to test.
- Test impressions limit per zone (11) - this option excludes zones from the test that don’t provide a single conversion for a fixed volume of impressions.
How to create a smartCPM campaign (Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder) and Skim)
SmartСPM is a pricing model based on the principle of a second price auction. What does it mean? By choosing this model, you are setting a maximum CPM price that you are willing to pay, but usually it will be lower than that due to the second-bid auction system. Your bid will be based on the next lower price on the slice of your campaign’s targeting, and the final price will be calculated in the following way: ‘second price’ (a bid of the next campaign to yours with a lower targeting) + 20%. However, this cannot exceed the price you have set when starting a campaign. Thus, this model helps to reduce the cost of the CPM and at the same time remain competitive on the slice of your offer.
What’s more, with smartCPM pricing model you can use a {cost} token to how much you’re paying for traffic (impressions) on each of the zones).
To create a smartCPM campaign, go to ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), ‘General’ section (2) and choose Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder) OR Skim in Ad Format (3).
After that, you need to go to ‘Pricings’ page (1) and chose the SmartCPM price model (2), choose country (3) and the maximum CPM bid (4) you are ready to pay for 1000 impressions:
But what is the difference between CPM and SmartCPM?
- Of course - Optimization! The biggest advantage is that SmartCPM pricing model helps to determine a CPM bid level that is most appropriate for every zone your campaign is running on and let you still be competitive, while with CPM pricing model you will pay one set bid for all zones. Another great advantage is that you can set a custom bid (max CPM price) for each zone your campaign’s received traffic from separately. In order to do this, you need to expand a smartCPM campaign’s stats on Dashboard page, click on a ‘pencil’/edit icon next to an individual zone’s CPM price and enter your own bid (please, bear in mind that it cannot be lower than a minimum CPM set for a geo of your campaign’s/a certain zone’s targeting).
- Custom bids for zones will help you to pay less for traffic from those zones that are not bringing a lot of conversions, but you’d still like to keep receiving traffic from that, but at a lower price than on other zones. Conversely, you can increase CPM for zones where your campaigns receives most conversions. This way, you will be able to optimise your campaign’s expenses and increase effectiveness of your campaign.
Start working with SmartCPM now, and let the formula optimise your campaign!
How to create a CPM campaign (all advertising formats)
CPM is a cost per mille (1000 impressions) model. You can set a flat CPM rate, which you are willing to pay for each 1000 advertisements (impressions) in the selected format. This pricing model is available on all advertising formats.
To create a CPM campaign, go to ‘Create Campaign’ page (1), ‘General’ section (2) and choose Push Notification, OnClick (Popunder) OR Skim in Ad Format (3).
After that, you have to go to Pricings page (1) and chose the CPM pricing model (2), choose country (3) and the maximum CPM bid (3) you want to pay for 1000 impressions:
Fill in other fields and set the rest of a campaign’s settings as usual.
Complete the campaign creation and either save it as a draft (‘Save as Draft’) or start it straight away (‘Start Campaign’).