Advertising placement: An optimizer’s guide to avoiding pitfalls!

Working in the optimization industry, I deal with money every day.

If you do it well, the money you spend is just a number; if you do it poorly, you can lose everything in a minute. Whenever it comes to compensation, most optimizers remember it vividly and dare not forget it. But we don’t want every optimizer to learn a lesson only after they get into trouble, so this time we have collected some cases of operational errors as a warning, reminding everyone to be careful when handling accounts - otherwise, if you make a mistake, not only will you not make any money, but you will also have to pay money to the company.

Let’s look at some cases. They were all achieved at the cost of their lives.

1. Not checking the account

Case 1: Toutiao-Financial Industry Account

During the National Day holiday, the optimizer didn't check the account for two days. When I logged into the backstage on October 3, I saw that an old plan that had never cost any money suddenly exploded yesterday. I used to spend less than 100 yuan a day, but yesterday I spent nearly 100,000 yuan. Although the conversion cost is lower than the bid, the backend effect is very poor. All the expenses incurred by this plan were compensated.

Experience: Optimizers should check the account at least once every morning and evening, even on weekends, National Day, or Chinese New Year. When ads are running, you are responsible for the data, so how can you not check it?

Case 2: WeChat-Financial Industry Accounts

The advertiser said, "We were also planning to increase the volume, but the optimizer didn't check the account that day, nor did he tell us how much money we spent. We spent more than 1 million in one day. The cost was quite high. We paid compensation later. Optimization still needs to pay attention to the cost and consumption amount, and it is best to tell us in advance."

Experience: Even if the advertiser requests a larger volume, if the consumption rate on that day is much faster than usual, you should tell the advertiser in time to let him know the current cost and consumption situation to see if the advertiser is willing to continue to increase the volume.

2. No Budget

Case 1: Headline News - Financial Accounts

Advertisers have clear daily budget requirements, but they can also communicate to increase the budget. In order to plan spending better, the optimizer set the budget to 9999999. I usually do this and there have never been any problems. But this time, when I refreshed the page half an hour later, I saw that tens of thousands of dollars had been spent, far exceeding the advertiser's daily budget limit. The advertiser believed that the agency's misoperation resulted in overspending and demanded compensation. In the end, the agency lost 20,000 yuan.

Experience: As an agent optimizer, if the advertiser has clear daily budget requirements, you must set a fixed budget in the "account daily budget" and prefer to spend less rather than more. If you want to increase the budget, communicate first and get permission before increasing it. This is the first rule to save your life.

Case 2: Launching Kuaishou-e-commerce account

The target conversion cost is 40 yuan, but the account has difficulty spending money, so the optimizer increases the bid to 60. According to past experience, even if the price is increased, the account consumption will be relatively slow, and the price can be reduced while consumption continues, just like usual, without setting a budget. This group started spending money at 7 p.m. that evening, and when they checked their accounts at 8 a.m. the next day, they found that they had spent nearly 30,000 yuan, an unexpectedly high amount. The conversion cost is 63, which is 1.5 times the target cost.

Experience: When offering a high price for testing, be sure to set a budget. You never know when the volume will explode, and once it does, you will suffer heavy losses. The budget is used to provide a safety net when the volume explodes.

Case 3: Toutiao-E-commerce account

The scheduling and budget of e-commerce customers are adjusted daily. Previously, they had to be set manually in the early morning. I forgot to modify it. It should have been 5,000, but it was spent according to the budget of 20,000 from the previous day. When I woke up in the morning, it was all spent and there was no time to adjust it.

Experience: If the budget is adjusted daily, then be sure to set the budget for the next day. You can use the "budget scheduled task" function.

Case 4: Headline News - Insurance Account

The optimizer copied a volume plan in the account. The budget of the volume plan was not limited. The normal budget of the new plan was 500. However, the optimizer did not modify the budget after copying it and started investing directly. He spent 6,000 yuan in 1 hour, and the cost was very high. The optimizer borne the expenses beyond the cost himself and transferred the money to the company.

Experience: When copying a volume plan, it is easy to directly implement it according to the original settings, but new plans generally require budgets, so pay attention to changes in budgets and bids.

3. Getting the conversion goal wrong

Case 1: Headline News

The advertiser required a registration cost of 40 yuan. When the optimizer selected the conversion goal, he selected "Activate". Normally, he should select "Activate and Register".

The bids were also placed in accordance with the registration requirements. The volume exploded that night, consuming 80,000 yuan. When I was doing the data the next day, I found that the activation number and the conversion number were the same, so I wondered if I had chosen the wrong conversion target.

Fortunately, the conversion cost on that day was much lower than the bid, and the registration rate was relatively high, so the cost met the requirements and the advertiser did not pursue the matter.

Case 2: Toutiao-social accounts

The advertiser requested that the conversion goal be "registration", but the optimizer mistakenly selected "activation" and named the conversion tracking as "activation and registration". Later, the optimizer resigned and the account was handed over to another person. The new optimizer has been using it as a correct conversion tracking and the cost was optimized according to the registration cost. After 2 months, it was found that thousands of conversions had been generated. The agency made the payment.

Experience: Choosing conversion targets is something that must be carefully considered. It is best for the third-party optimizer to take a screenshot with the advertiser to confirm what conversion target to select before taking action. Many friends have reported that they have chosen the wrong conversion goals.

Another small suggestion is to check the "Conversion goal" option in the "Custom columns" option at the planning level. This way, you can directly see what conversion goal is selected at the planning level without having to go to conversion tracking to see it. If you make a wrong selection, you can find it earlier.

4. Bid with the wrong decimal point

Case 1: Headline placement - industry not clear

The optimizer omitted the decimal point when making the bid, and in order to increase the volume easily, he did not set the account budget. He did not close the ad group after the plan was uploaded, and did other things while waiting for the review. As a result, after the plan was approved, he ran with it like crazy, and the entire account balance was spent in a short time.

Case 2: Headline News - Financial Management

One time I wanted to adjust the bid from 0.2 to 0.5, but I ended up adjusting it to 50. The 500 yuan budget was spent in an instant. I was shocked when I saw the cost... Because I had set a budget, the impact was not that big. The advertiser did not pursue the matter.

Case 3: Launching a game in the App Store

I wanted to adjust the bid for a keyword to 8.5, but I missed the decimal point and the bid was 850. I downloaded 2 copies of the keyword, costing 1,700 yuan.

Case 4: Launching in App Store

We just adjusted the bid incorrectly and forgot to add a decimal point or something. It might have been 0.35 yuan but it turned into 35. This happened to me. There was something wrong with the pad. I clicked confirm and changed it back immediately, but I still lost some money. I was so scared that I never dare to use the pad to adjust the bid again.

Experience: When adjusting the bid, pay extra attention to 0 and decimal points. If you make a mistake, it will be a big problem. Especially on a mobile phone, it's easy to get it wrong.

5. Wrong time selection/incomplete suspension

Case 1: Toutiao-E-commerce account

The delivery time was set incorrectly, and the delivery was made at a time when the customer did not deliver. The delivery of various categories of e-commerce festival customers was carried out according to the schedule, especially the preheated products. For example, the delivery was from 11.1 to 11.10, but the delivery was forgotten to be paused on the 10th, and there was also consumption on the 11th.

Case 2: Publish Toutiao-novel account

The advertiser temporarily stopped advertising, and the optimizer only changed the advertising time to next week. There was no direct shutdown plan, so the advertising started automatically the next week, resulting in a loss of 5,000.

Experience: A common pitfall in advertising time is, "For example, today is Wednesday, and the advertiser asks for a pause today. OK, I'll pause the remaining days of the week. But I won't pause Monday and Tuesday. Advertising will automatically start on Monday."

Case 3: Headline placement - unclear industry

Advertisers make placements in stages, and after the account balance is spent, no adjustments are made and it is simply left there without any suspension plan. After a period of time, when I invested again, the money was transferred to the account, and the account started investing automatically, and I spent a lot of money. However, the installation package has expired, resulting in compensation.

Experience: Pausing is something that requires stricter control than budgeting. Pausing means not spending a penny. When you need to pause the entire account, just use the switch to pause it instead of using a time period, as this will make it easy to miss something.

You can do the following: 1. Pause the ad group; 2. Select "Unlimited including deleted" for the ad plan status, then Pause all; 3. Set the account budget to the lowest value allowed by the system. Guangdiantong is 50 yuan, and Toutiao is 1,000 yuan.

6. Not excluding specific users

Case 1

The client gave some exclusion packages and asked that they must be included when delivering the content. When I added it, two plans mistakenly used the exclusion package as targeting. These users who were originally to be excluded were often more likely to convert after seeing the ads than new users, so the plans that used the exclusion packages incorrectly were consumed very quickly, but the back-end costs did not meet the requirements, resulting in compensation.

Case 2: Toutiao-education account

This customer was given an exclusion package to attract new users. They assess the costs of old users and new users differently. There were two plans that did not include the exclusion package and were missed. After that, the two plans ran quite fast and gained volume quickly. Although it was discovered within an hour, more than 10,000 yuan had already been spent. The customer then demanded compensation because many of the customers were old users and the cost did not meet the standard.

Case 3

An advertiser has a product with a large number of users and has launched an express version. It is required to exclude the original App using "App Behavior Targeting". However, the optimizer did not eliminate it, which caused the account to be consumed very quickly, and it ran like this for several days. When we reviewed the situation, we found that many of them were old users, which resulted in large compensation.

Experience: If you are required to exclude a certain user, you must exclude that user. Common things to exclude are population groups and geographic targeting.

In addition, after selecting the targeting, you can look at the estimated user coverage to see if the population size is correct. For example, if there is no restriction on targeting, it should be in the hundreds of millions, but this time it is only a few hundred thousand, so you have to look back to see if there is any mistake. It's like checking homework.

7. Wrong bidding method

Case 1 - Kuaishou - Social Account

The advertiser required an activation cost of 2 yuan. Normally, the optimization goal should be "activation". However, the optimizer mistakenly selected "number of behaviors" and bid according to the activation cost. It was discovered when they spent 1,893 yuan that the activation cost was 50 times the target.

Case 2 - Launching App Store - Tool Products

I chose the wrong bidding method, I chose CPC instead of OCPA, the bid was 10 times higher, and I lost 40,000.

Case 3- Launch of Guangdiantong

This is also a place where problems are prone to occur when deploying Guangdiantong accounts. When creating a new ad, the system's default bidding method is "CPC", and the optimizer may forget to change it.

People say things like "Let me give you a typical example, I used the price of ocpa to bid cpc...", "There are many mistakes in bid settings, most of which are caused by problems with the bidding mode. For example, normally it is ocpa and the bid is 30, but if you choose cpc and bid 30, you will spend a lot."

Experience: The bidding method is very important. A small mistake can lead to a huge error. Be sure to pay attention!

8. Wrong Android/IOS system selection

Case 1- Headline Delivery-Tool Account

I chose the wrong system, I chose Android instead of iOS. The cost was very low so I increased the volume and lost 100,000 yuan.

Case 2 - Headline Advertising - E-commerce Account

The App promotion landing page was suspended. It was supposed to be targeted at the iOS system, but I forgot to set it up and it was invested in all. With the bidding at the iOS level, the volume increased rapidly, with more than 40,000 consumption in an hour, which is about 15 times the usual. 90% of the consumption was on Android, with an explosive effect.

Case 3- Publish Toutiao-Novel Account

The boss said to the optimizer, "I just checked my account and saw that the download method was the landing page plan, which should be for Android devices, but I chose Unlimited. This is a serious mistake."

Experience: The choice between Android and iOS systems is a sensitive point. There are big differences in cost assessment, so you need to pay attention. Especially when using landing pages, the system will not automatically identify whether it is Android or iOS, and you need to choose it yourself.

9. Smart volume release has opened up the limited directional

I originally wanted to invest locally, but I chose smart volume expansion without carefully selecting all, so all the leads I got were from other places. I lost a lot of money on this matter.

Experience: When there are rigid requirements on the direction, you must not select "all" when the smart volume release "can release the direction".

10. Mistakes were made when batch editing

Case 1

There are also accounts that have completed installation before, and bid according to the installation. After the connection is completed, the bid is activated/registered. When changing the bid, do it in batches and increase the bid for the previous installation.

Case 2

Just this week, I changed the bid when I modified the budget plan in batches. I have 4 plans and I want to change the budget from 10,000 yuan to 1k. I just change the bid to 1k. 40,000 yuan is gone in ten minutes and the cost is several hundred yuan. The normal bid is 20.

Experience: It is easy to not read carefully when making batch changes, so you need to pay extra attention. Key information that needs to be clearly distinguished can be written in the plan name, such as installation bid and registration bid, which is easier to read.

Conclusion

A timely way to stop loss

If you make too many plans every day, it may not be easy to find problems. I recommend a good method to everyone: just check the running plan. Once you have a plan in place, check it from beginning to end as soon as possible, going over the conversion goals, bids, links added to the landing page, budget, etc. in detail.

There is a case that left a deep impression on me: a novel advertiser placed ads for both App downloads and quick applications at the same time, but the assessment costs were different, and the quick application assessment cost was lower. The optimizer mistakenly bid for the quick application plan as the App plan. These two plans had not cost any money, but suddenly the volume increased after one week. After the volume started to increase, the optimizer did not check it and directly started communicating with advertisers to increase the volume. When I saw the second retention cost the next day, I realized the data was wrong and the cost was so high. After careful inspection, I found that these two plans were actually for the delivery of quick applications (downloaded using a landing page, and a link to the quick application was added to the landing page).

Later I reflected that although there were many plans in the account and it might be impossible to check them all, there were only two items that were running in volume. If you have just started to run the plan, you can greatly reduce the loss by carefully checking these two plans.

The work of checking the running volume plan can also be done by the agency’s team leader, director or advertiser.

After seeing so many cases of operational errors, don’t be scared. We are all human and we all make mistakes. The error cases mentioned above include some excellent optimizers. Regarding mistakes, in the words of one of my clients, "Don't be afraid of making mistakes when handling your account. If mistakes occur, just solve the problems."

I hope there will be fewer compensation accidents in the optimization circle~

To sum up

10 common mistakes made by optimizers

1. Didn’t check the account

2. No budget

3. Wrong conversion goals

4. The bid price has the wrong decimal point

5. Wrong time selection/incomplete suspension

6. Not excluding specific users

7. Wrong bidding method

8. Wrong Android/iOS system selection

9. Smart volume release has released the restrictions on directional

10. Wrong changes were made during batch modification

3 simple ways to cope

1. The optimizer should check the account at least once every morning and evening.

2. A budget must be set.

3. Once a plan is started, check it from beginning to end as soon as possible.

Ps: A few tips for media friends

To friends at Tencent:

Would you like to consider changing the default order of bidding methods? The default bidding method now is CPC bidding, but people rarely use CPC bidding anymore. If the default bidding method is changed to conversion bidding, the probability of optimizers making mistakes will be greatly reduced.

The default target of Toutiao is "conversion volume"~

To friends on Toutiao:

When launching an app for download and the download method is a landing page, it is recommended to add a function that automatically identifies the platform. Now when the download method is "download link", it can be automatically identified, which is very convenient to use; but when the download method is "landing page", it cannot be identified. The choice of delivery platform is a point where errors are easy to occur. If it can be identified automatically, the possibility of delivery accidents will be reduced.

To everyone:

1. In the case where the bid has the wrong decimal point, I think we can add a reminder at the product level. Especially when adjusting bids using a mobile phone, it is easy to make mistakes with decimal points.

For example, if the bid is much higher than the historical level, would it be better to add a confirmation prompt? This one from Tencent is very good.

2. Account suspension is always a problem that trips up optimizers. Can we add a “one-click account suspension” feature? It would be great if the account could be shut down cleanly and completely!

Author: Aunt Ning

Source: Sanlitun Information Flow