How to plan and design the process of CPC bidding advertising?

For small and medium-sized customers, advertising budgets are generally limited, and they need to be allocated reasonably and the effects maximized. In order to enable small and medium-sized customers to achieve more independent advertising and bring more and more accurate conversions, this article introduces the CPC bidding advertising design process for small and medium-sized customers, allowing advertisers to achieve independent advertising and management.

Preface

As the Internet traffic dividend gradually disappears, advertisers are gradually shifting their focus to performance advertising, especially for small and medium-sized customers. Compared with brand advertising, performance advertising is more accurate and can better calculate the input-output ratio. The biggest feature of performance advertising is that you can quickly see how much money the ad has consumed, how many clicks it has, and how many downloads and registrations it has brought.

For small and medium-sized customers, advertising budgets are generally limited, and they need to be allocated reasonably and the effects maximized. In order to enable small and medium-sized customers to achieve more independent advertising and bring more and more accurate conversions, this article introduces the CPC bidding advertising design process for small and medium-sized customers, allowing advertisers to achieve independent advertising and management.

The entire process is based on the example of small and medium-sized customers promoting their own stores. It is divided into four major nodes: creating advertising ideas, creating promotion plans, advertising placement, and data reporting . Details are as follows.

01 How to create advertising creatives?

What is advertising creativity? Creatives are the ads that users see on a web page, app, or other digital environment.

William Bernbach, a famous advertising guru, once said: "Creativity is the soul of advertising, and it is the activity that gives advertising spirit and life."

In order to truly attract consumers' attention, trigger inner resonance, and leave a deep impression in their minds, advertisers need to create appropriate advertising creatives based on ad positions and audiences to match user preferences and ultimately achieve the marketing purpose of advertising. Therefore, before placing an advertisement, you need to create corresponding advertising creative materials.

In order to achieve unified and efficient management of materials by advertisers, customers need to create materials before creating an advertising plan. The materials can only be associated with the advertising plan after they have been reviewed and approved. The detailed process of advertising material creation is as follows.

At present, there are generally many advertising positions in the media, and different advertising positions will have corresponding creative materials. As shown in the figure below, the requirements for materials for banner advertising positions and advertising positions in information flow are different.

The fields for creating a material are as follows:

1. Creative Type

That is, the creative type that is consistent with the promotional content, so you need to first select the type of creative material. Creative types will be classified according to the business. For example, in the tourism business there will be hard advertising banners, travel notes, and other types. This article takes the store promotion ideas for small and medium-sized customers as an example, that is, to promote the store details page of small and medium-sized customers to increase the exposure of the store.

2. Promote your store

For small and medium-sized customers or agents, there will be multiple stores, so customers need to choose the store that currently needs to be promoted, direct traffic to the selected store, and then bring about conversions; if it is other creative types, it is necessary to select corresponding promotional content. For example: If the creative type is a hard banner, the promotional content can be pictures/videos.

3. Creative name

Generally, you need to name the newly created idea to facilitate later search.

4. Content

Upload different materials according to the creative type of promotion. For example, just upload the material title and picture in the advertising position of the information flow as shown in the figure below.

5. Preview

After creating a piece of material, we need to allow advertisers to see the actual promotion style, and generally provide a preview function.

In order to prevent the emergence of illegal materials or materials inconsistent with the promotional content, which will bring adverse effects to the media platform and bring bad experience to users, when a user creates a piece of material, the platform needs to review it, and it will take effect only after passing the review. The specific review process is as follows:

1. Once the created material is successfully reviewed, it will take effect and can be associated when creating a promotion plan.
2. When the created material fails the review, you can enter the system to re-edit the original material and submit it again until it passes the review and takes effect.

02 How to create a promotion plan

After creating the materials, advertisers need to consider how to promote their own stores. They need to consider when to promote, how much budget to have for each day, and on which advertising spaces to promote.

Therefore, in order to facilitate advertisers to manage promotion time, budget and promotion content, it is necessary to provide advertisers with the function of creating promotion plans.

A promotion plan is an advertiser's preliminary plan for advertising promotion (including budget, time, promotion content and location, etc.). Advertisers can adjust it at any time according to the environment. Therefore, when creating a promotion plan, it is not linked to the balance of the advertising account. The sum of the budgets of all promotion plans of an advertiser can exceed the balance of the advertising account.

Taking the promotion of stores for small and medium-sized customers as an example, I will introduce to you how to create a promotion plan. The prototype is shown in the figure below.

For small and medium-sized customers, they care more about the position of their own stores in the list page. They all hope to appear at the front of the list to bring more traffic to the store . Therefore, in order to meet the needs of multiple advertisers on the same destination list page and provide users with a better experience.

In this example, we use 2, 5, 8, and 11 on the list page as ad slots (for specific delivery strategies, see Part 3: CPC Advertising). In addition to the default positions, customers can also add other smart ad slots to bring more exposure to the store. The specific process of creating a promotion plan is as follows:

1. Choose promotional content

First, you need to determine the content you want to promote. It can be a store, a website, or an app. This article takes the advertiser’s store as an example.

2. Choose the time for promotion

The promotion time needs to be linked to the advertiser's activity time, and the appropriate promotion time should be selected.

3. Promotion budget

Since the current model is a bidding model, the consumption of advertisements is uncertain and advertisers are required to set a certain daily budget. If the daily consumption amount reaches the advertiser's daily budget, the advertisement will automatically go offline and display "Budget for the day has been reached."

4. Advertising Bid

Advertisers need to bid according to their own ranking requirements (which must be higher than the minimum price of the ad). They can also bid according to the bid suggestions of the system to be ranked in the position estimated by the system (each ranking will have a corresponding bid suggestion). If advertisers hope to always appear at the top of the ranking or get more exposure, they need to adjust their bids in time.

5. Add smart ad placement

For small and medium-sized customer stores, in addition to normal ranking advertisements, there will also be other promotional locations such as information flow to bring more exposure to the stores. Advertisers can choose according to their own needs.

6. Associated creatives

Different smart ad slots need to be associated with corresponding materials before they can be displayed in the corresponding ad slots. At the same time, when associating materials, you can only associate materials that are consistent with the current promotion content and have taken effect. Once the materials are associated with the advertising plan, they are no longer allowed to be modified. If you want to modify the materials, you need to re-create the effective material modification advertising plan and re-associate the materials.

7. Promotion Area

Because smart advertising spots have geographical location attributes, advertisers can choose smart advertising spots in certain areas to promote their own stores according to their needs.

8. Targeted groups

In order to provide advertisers with more accurate target groups and bring more conversions, advertisers can select some basic population labels, such as: gender, age, parent-child and other labels; when the advertising plan is created, the advertisement will take effect according to the promotion time.

At the same time, advertisers can launch/offline advertising plans at any time. According to the account situation, advertiser operations and the circulation of the advertisement itself, the status of the advertising plan is generally classified into six states: waiting for delivery, being delivered, completed, offline, daily budget met, and insufficient account balance (determined according to the company's business).

Since the status of the advertising plan is first determined by the advertising account balance, the advertising plan will only flow according to normal logic when the advertising account balance is greater than 0.

Secondly, when the advertising balance meets the conditions, the advertising plan is determined by the advertiser's operations. Therefore, based on the operation of the advertising account and the advertiser, the priority of the status is: insufficient account balance>offline>waiting for delivery=delivery in progress=delivery completed. For statuses of the same level, whichever appears first will be displayed.

Except for the other states of "end of advertising delivery", advertisers can modify the promotion time, daily budget, bid and other contents in the advertising plan at any time.

03 Advertising Process

When the advertising plan takes effect, there are two issues to consider: How to display the content that the client wants to promote in the corresponding advertising position? What kind of advertisement will not significantly affect the user experience?

As mentioned above, small and medium-sized customers pay more attention to the ranking in the list. However, in order to minimize the impact on user experience, basic requirements are set for the stores to be promoted, especially for the relatively forward positions, such as the second position. Only when the promoted store meets the requirements for the second position (such as it must have five-star reviews and more than 50 reviews to be placed in the second position) can it be promoted in the second position.

In order to continuously expand traffic for stores and attract more attention, stores can also promote in other advertising spaces in the media besides list page ads (collectively referred to as smart advertising spaces). At the same time, they can also conduct regional and population targeting to maximize traffic utilization and bring in more conversions. However, it is necessary to display advertisements that fit the scenario based on the attributes and position of the ad space. On the one hand, this can recommend fun and interesting stores to users, and on the other hand, it can also drive traffic to the stores.

Therefore, the ranking ad slots on the list page and the smart selection ad slots have different delivery strategies, but the similarity is that they both filter out malicious clicks to maximize the interests of advertisers. The specific delivery strategies of the two ads are as follows:

1. List page ranking advertising delivery process

List page ranking ads are in a specific destination list. By purchasing CPC ads, the advertiser’s store can be ranked in a relatively high position. Here we take 2, 5, 8, and 11 as an example. At the same time, in order to bring a better experience to users, the platform will have certain requirements for the second-place store (for example, it must have five-star reviews and more than 50 reviews to be placed in the second place). The specific delivery strategies are as follows:

In general, the bidding mechanism and display strategy of peer list advertising space can be summarized as follows: (1) Recall

When a user visits an exposed advertising location, the user side calls the advertising interface, and the advertising side obtains all effective advertisements that meet the requirements (i.e., consistent with the destination location visited by the user), and filters out advertisements that are not effective, have met the budget, etc. If the user is on the food shopping list page in Beijing, the client will initiate a request to the advertisement, and the advertisement side will retrieve all effective advertisements with the promotion destination of Beijing and the type of shopping.

(2) Sorting

When the advertising side has pulled all the effective ads that meet the requirements, it first needs to determine whether they meet the second-place display conditions (for example, they must have five-star reviews and more than 50 reviews to be placed in the second position). If they meet the second-place display conditions, they will enter the second-place display queue. If they do not meet the conditions, they will enter the queue for the remaining positions.

For example, if two advertisers are promoting stores whose destinations and categories are both Beijing and shopping, the first advertiser has 20 reviews and a bid of 12 yuan, while the second advertiser has 70 reviews and a bid of 6 yuan, then only the second advertiser is eligible to enter the second bidding ranking queue, and the first advertiser automatically enters the ranking queue for ad positions 5, 8, and 11.

(3) Display

For the second position, all advertising plans that meet the second position will be ranked in reverse order according to the bidding results. The highest price will be displayed in the second position. Others that have not obtained the opportunity to be displayed will enter the 5th, 8th, and 11th positions and enter the bidding reverse order. They will be displayed according to the bidding results.

(4) Billing

In this example, the generalized second price GSP method is used for bidding advertising, that is, the second bid + 0.01

Method of deduction. If the bids are the same, they will be randomly sorted. For example, if there are two advertisers who both meet the conditions for the second position, the first one bids 12 yuan and the second one bids 10 yuan. Finally, the first advertiser successfully bids and is displayed in the second position on the list page, but the billing is based on 10.01.

2. Smart Ad Placement Advertising Process

Smart advertising spaces are advertising spaces in the media with high-quality traffic that can be targeted at the audience. Unlike the ranked ad spots on the list page, there will not be a large number of spots for bidding on smart ad spots. Instead, pricing is based on a certain ad position in the media and targeted audience. Smart advertising spots can be promoted according to the promotion areas and targeted groups selected by advertisers.

Promotion area :

When an advertiser selects certain areas in the smart ad space, the advertiser's bid will enter the sorting queue for bidding only when the user visits the ad space in that area, and the final decision on whether to display it will be based on the bidding results. If an advertiser chooses Beijing for promotion and bids the highest, then when a user visits the smart selection ad space on the Beijing destination page, the advertiser's ad will be displayed.

Targeted groups :

DMP (data management platform) provides user labels (such as female users). When a user visits an advertising location, the promotion area is first screened, and the user's demographic profile is obtained through the big data interface. The effective advertisements are then matched with the demographic profile and sorted according to the bid. Finally, the decision on which advertisement to display is made based on the bidding results.

For example, if an advertiser chooses Chengdu as the promotion area and the user tag is female, then when a male user visits the smart selection ad space on the Chengdu destination page, the advertiser's ad will not be displayed no matter how high the advertiser's bid is.

In general, the bidding mechanism and display strategy of smart advertising placements can be summarized as follows:

(1) Recall

When a user visits an exposed advertising location, the user side calls the advertising interface and transmits the user ID. After obtaining the user ID, the advertising side calls the corresponding population portrait and all effective advertising plans that are consistent with the user portrait and the promotion area.

For example, if a female user is visiting the smart advertising location on the Shanghai destination page, the client will initiate a request to the advertisement and transmit the user ID. The advertisement side will call the big data interface to obtain the user's population portrait containing a female label. The advertisement will then call all effective advertising plans whose promotion area is Shanghai and whose targeted population is female.

(2) Sorting

All effective advertising bids that meet the promotion area and targeted population tags are sorted in reverse order.

(3) Display

The highest-priced ad among all effective ad bids that meet the promotion area and targeted population tags will be displayed, and other ad positions will not be displayed at this time.

(4) Billing

In this example, the generalized second price GSP method is used for bidding advertising, that is, the second bid + 0.01

Method of deduction. For example, if there are two advertisers who both meet the requirements for smart selection of ad positions, the first one bids 12 yuan and the second one bids 10 yuan. Finally, the first advertiser successfully bids and is displayed in the second position on the list page, but the charges are based on 10.01.

Since the smart selection ad slots consist of multiple ad slots, they will be controlled through frequency control strategies. On the one hand, it avoids filling the same advertisement in different advertisement slots with the same user more than n times in one day, thus disturbing the user. On the other hand, avoid filling the same ads in similar ad spaces on the same page.

04 CPC advertising data report

When the advertising campaign is over, advertisers are more concerned about a series of data such as how many people viewed their POI, how many people clicked on it, how much money was spent today, whether the budget for the day was met, etc.

In order to allow customers to see the advertising data more intuitively and make relevant summaries, it is necessary to provide users with visual multi-dimensional data reports related to the advertising for their convenience. The data report generally contains the number of exposures, clicks, and consumption amounts. Exposures and clicks are calculated based on UV or PV. Each company has different standards, and UV is the main one here. The data mainly has the following dimensions:

• Date: You can view the delivery data of a certain day during the advertising process, and can only view dates before today.
• Number of impressions : the total number of exposures a POI receives in different advertising locations.
• Number of clicks : the total number of UV clicks a POI receives in different advertising locations.
• Consumption amount : that is, the number of UV clicks of Zhongtian users in a certain day * price.

Here is an example:

05 Summary

In CPC bidding advertising, the entire advertising process is completed from creating materials - creating advertising plans - advertising delivery - data reporting. However, some advertising status is linked to the advertising account in real time, which is not mentioned in this article. When actually building a bidding advertising system, it is necessary to combine it with the company's business development direction and current situation to build a process suitable for the current business development.

Finally, thank you all for your patience in reading. If there are any errors in the process or opinions, you are welcome to criticize and correct me.

Author: Flowers bloom in dreams

Source: Flowers bloom in dreams