Automation is here, don’t get left behind!

In the age of data driven decision making, automation is becoming more and more important in the ad tech world. Why spend your valuable time reading and analyzing tons of data to make advertising decisions? Instead, advertisers are using automation tools to increase engagement, ROI and profits without the need for endless hours of building and managing online campaigns.

ExoClick provides a range of automation tools, it’s like having a team of smart assistants working for you. All you need to do is set the parameters within which your ‘assistants’ should work. And the more ‘assistants’ you have, the more you can scale up your campaigns.

 

How does automated advertising work?

There are currently a few different ways that advertisers are automating their online advertising efforts. But here we will talk about two: monetary based algorithms and ad-performance based algorithms.

Monetary algorithms use revenue and conversion data to automate your advertising based on your revenue and ROI data. For example, if you are running an e-commerce site your automation for campaigns would be with monetary based algorithms that analyse the sales and conversion data from your campaigns. The algorithm would use this data to increase or decrease bids on campaigns that are dependant on their monetary performance. If your ad campaign is generating more sales for your e-store, the algorithm will automatically increase bids on that campaign to reach the target ROI you have set. 

Ad-performance based algorithms are based on the performance of your ad campaigns. They use performance data gathered from the campaigns you are currently running. These algorithms optimize the best campaigns and block or pause low performing ads and ad zones. Ad-performance based algorithms are usually controlled by rules. For example, you could set up rules that say, “If my ad gets a CTR lower than one percent after showing 20,000 impressions, then turn it off”. This type of automation can really save you time checking all the ad zones that are performing well or under performing, if you have a good set of rules in place. 

 

ExoClick’s automation tools

Use ExoClick’s Bidder to automate your bidding and black list non-performing ad zones in order to optimise your budget spend. As well as for running full blown campaigns, this is also extremely useful for running test budgets, allowing the algorithms to test your campaigns first before making that big investment. So you or your team don’t have to worry about manually analysing and stopping/pausing campaigns – the algorithm does it all for you.

Here are some stats, the number of new users each month creating campaigns with The Bidder from Q1 to Q3:

Looking at the number of rules created from Q1-Q3:

And here are the types of rules have users been creating from Q1-Q3:

Use ExoClick’s Variations Optimisation tool to automate the optimisation of your best converting variation. You can use one of three algorithms to test the best performing variation:

  • Even – Spreads the traffic evenly between the Landing Pages.
  • Automatic CTR – Send traffic to the variation with the best CTR.
  • Automatic on Conversion – Send traffic to the variation performing best according to your optimisation goal.

Since ExoClick introduced this tool in August 2019, the percentage of algorithms used across campaigns are: 

Use ExoClick’s Offers Landing Page Optimisation tool to automate the traffic sent to Landing Page variants. You can use one of three algorithms to test the best performing LP: 

  • Even – Spreads the traffic evenly between the LPs
  • Fixed – Enables you to define the exact percentage of traffic each LP will receive
  • Automatic Optimisation – Send the majority of traffic to the best performing LP

The percentage of algorithms used across campaigns from Q1-Q3 are:

Looking at the percentage of campaigns on ExoClick’s network using the above two tools are:

 

How automation benefits your business

Not only do our automation tools save you money on campaign spending but they also saves you money on staff costs that you would have normally paid to manually carry out the work of the algorithm. 

Time is the other great benefit. Firstly if all this optimisation was being done manually an employee might be having a coffee break or lunch break, or sleeping as a night campaign is running. At that critical moment that they are not there a campaign could be losing money, but the automation tools are always working and optimising for you. And there is another great benefit with time, the tools free up your time and your team’s time so all of you can focus on other aspects of your business. This could include more creative time for devising campaigns, strategic planning, business development, etc.

As we enter 2020 everyone will be making that shift to using automation, so don’t get left behind. If everyone else is using it and you aren’t, your business is going to suffer, because automation makes changes faster and more accurately than a human. If you want to continually compete embrace the power of automation now!

Giles Hirst