Sharing practical experience in placing headline advertisements!

If advertising is like cooking, then the account is a kitchen, creativity is the ingredients, the various functions provided by the media are kitchen utensils such as woks, casseroles, and frying pans, the timing and amplitude of adjusting the account are the heat of cooking, and the optimizer is the chef.

If a chef wants to cook good dishes, he must have good ingredients, be proficient in using kitchen tools, and master the cooking temperature for each dish. You should at least know how to use a rice cooker, so you still have to understand the functions of the media.

To a certain extent, the use of these tools is also part of "cooking skills". If the tools are used well, it can indeed add points. For example, if you use this potato grater, wouldn’t the potato shreds be better than those cut by hand?

And when you ask the media to check the account, you always hope that they will tell you "If you adjust it this way, it will definitely increase the volume!"

But they always say after analyzing 200 words:

"There is no volume in the plan. It is recommended to use one-click volume increase, delivery manager, and automatic bidding."

I always say this when I show people my accounts (smile)

There is no way. No one has a magic trick to increase the volume immediately, but these tools may really help the account to increase the volume, so you still have to use them.

Among these tools, I think "automatic bidding" is more difficult to understand and is also easier to over-indulge, so I studied it for a while, and today I want to share with you what "automatic bidding" is.

Contents of this article:

1. Features of manual bidding

2. Introduction to automatic bidding

3. Automatic bidding usage

4. Negative examples of automatic bidding

1. Features of manual bidding

When we say bidding, we usually mean "manual bidding", which means you just write a price yourself according to how much you want to bid. In manual bidding, there are several bidding methods, such as oCPC and oCPM, according to different billing methods.

For large media like Toutiao and Tencent, the conversion bids are relatively stable, and the costs generally do not exceed the bid by too much, basically fluctuating within 20% above or below the bid. If they exceed the bid, there will be compensation.

But there will also be a very difficult problem: no quantity.

This involves the issue of system delivery targets that we cannot see: when the system is delivering based on manual bidding, it only uses cost as the optimization target , and it will have volume if there is volume, and there will be no volume if there is no volume. Therefore, if the bid remains unchanged, the cost difference between spending 3,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan will not be too big.

But we don’t just want the cost to be OK! We want to "achieve sales volume while keeping costs reasonable!" So automatic bidding appeared.

2. What is automatic bidding?

First, let me introduce the basic usage of the background.

With the introduction of automatic bidding, Toutiao now has two bidding options: "manual" and "automatic" . It was all manual before, so there is no such option and you don’t need to select it.

After selecting "Automatic", you will find that there is no place to fill in the bid, you only need to fill in the budget.

This is also the key point: automatic bidding, automatic bidding, means that the system automatically bids for you, and you don’t have to fill in the bid yourself.

Does automatic bidding also mean automatic costs?

No no, that's too scary.

The system will estimate the cost range based on the budget you fill in and the historical data performance of the account. The cost is greatly affected by the budget. Generally speaking, the larger the budget, the higher the cost; the smaller the budget, the lower the cost. If you think the estimated cost is too high, you can manually tell the system the cost you want.

The background operation is as follows:

Automatic bidding background screenshot

Now that we know the basic usage of automatic bidding, let’s take a closer look at its features. Let’s first look at the definition of this product:

This is the definition of automatic bidding given by Toutiao, which I think is very clear

Its key point lies in the "dual goals". Earlier we said that the main problem with manual bidding is that it does not produce volume. Automatic bidding is designed to solve this problem. It uses budget and cost as optimization goals. It not only helps you control costs, but also takes into account the utilization rate of your budget, helping you spend your budget.

This is also the main difference between automatic bidding and manual bidding: the system has a "budget spending" item in the delivery target. In order to protect costs, the manual bidding system will adopt a more conservative delivery strategy; the automatic bidding system has two delivery targets and the strategy will be more bold.

For example, if your plan is not too bad, but it doesn't cost any money:

The manual bidding system may not care about you. It just needs to maintain the cost. If it thinks the cost cannot be achieved, it will give up.

However, automatic bidding will take into account the need to spend your budget, so it will offer a higher price to get volume, and the corresponding initial cost will also be higher.

Because budget utilization is a delivery target, the size of the budget has a huge impact on costs. So why does a big budget lead to high costs? Let’s understand it in the simplest way: the system will prioritize helping you find people with the lowest cost, and then spread out little by little, so the smaller the budget, the lower the cost.

To sum up, the biggest features of automatic bidding are:

Cost is greatly affected by budget.

The smaller the budget, the lower the cost; the larger the budget, the higher the cost.

So don’t set a budget of 999999 right from the start. This is using automatic bidding as manual bidding, and the cost may be very high.

Next, let’s look at some usage tips.

3. How to use automatic bidding

Because automatic bidding has two optimization goals, the cost of automatic bidding is bound to be less stable than manual bidding. This is also the general feeling of everyone after using it: it is easy to exceed the cost .

So why use automatic bidding? Because it can really run volume. How important is it for everyone to be able to run a certain amount! It doesn't cost you anything, it will make you anxious to death! If there is a product that can run volume, I would definitely want to try it! Even if the cost is high, we have to find a way to use it!

How much does automated bidding cost? My product colleagues said that overall, the probability that the cost is within the estimated range is relatively high; from my individual perspective, there are times when the cost is not within the estimated range.

But there are indeed some plans that were successfully tested after using automatic bidding, and the cost was not bad. For the possibility of running, this function is worth trying.

The usage of automatic bidding has been summarized very clearly by the product operation students. Let’s learn it directly:

【Small steps, fast progress】Adjust the budget. Start with a small budget and increase it in small increments multiple times.

Because the budget is large, the estimated cost will be higher; the budget is small, the estimated cost will be lower; so you should start with a smaller budget, and when 70% or 80% of the budget has been spent, you can reduce the budget a little more. This way, the system will only help you spend a small part of the budget each time, and the cost can be more stable.

Next, let's look at a case where usage fails. There are some places where I did not operate correctly, I would like to give you a reference.

4. Negative examples of automatic bidding

This is a second-class e-commerce product. When it is launched, we do not seek large quantities, but cost first. The target cost is 32.

I invested for a week without spending any money, but my account spent more than 100 yuan a day. Later, I used automatic bidding, and it really started to work.

Let’s take a look at the plan that was first implemented. Its delivery data is as follows.

Take a look at the delivery process. The initial budget was 6,000, the estimated system cost was 44, and 2,000 yuan was spent on the 11th, with a cost of 46, far exceeding the target cost of 32. But it was particularly difficult to run the account at that time, and it was already a good plan, so I did not shut it down. I adjusted the expected cost to 37 at 7pm and let it continue to invest.

At 11:40 am on the 12th, I found that it cost 1,400 that day, with a cost of 37, which was close to the cost I filled in manually. I am very happy.

Screenshot of this plan consumption at 11:40 on the 12th

Then I wanted to run it more, so I raised its budget from 6,000 to 20,000, hoping that the cost would remain the same.

After the adjustment, its cost skyrocketed. When it cost 6,000, the cost rose to 48. This cost is too high, my target cost is 32. What did I want to do at that time. There are several options:

1) Reduce the budget

2) Reduce the cost of manual filling

3) If you resist for a while, the cost may be reduced the next day

4) Turn it off. give up

I chose to reduce the budget. At 8 p.m., the budget was reduced to 10,000. I spent 8,000 that day and the cost was still 48. The cost was still very high the next day, so we shut it down.

The overall operation process is as follows:

What I did wrong was "I shouldn't have raised the budget from 6000 to 20,000 when I was spending 1400 and the cost was not bad". The cost went up directly. If I had not adjusted it at that time and let it run with a budget of 6,000, and then reduced its budget (for example, to 4,000) when the cost was high, maybe this plan would not have died. Remember what the media teacher said, "Adjust the budget in small steps. Start with a small budget and increase it in small increments many times."

5. Optimization summary

Manual bidding only optimizes costs. Regardless of whether you spend your budget or not, the cost is stable but the volume is likely to be low .

Automatic bidding uses budget and cost as optimization targets. The system hopes to help you spend your budget, and the cost is greatly affected by the budget.

·Advantages of automatic bidding: It can really increase the volume.

The problem with automatic bidding: costs are not as easy to control as manual bidding. I prepared this article before the New Year. At that time, everyone thought the cost was likely to be high, but now I feel the cost is acceptable. You can give it a try.

To control costs as much as possible, you can use the “small steps and fast progress” approach to adjust the budget – start with a small budget and then increase the budget by small amounts multiple times to stabilize costs.

"Small increase in budget" can be based on 1.5 times the original budget

When using automatic bidding, don’t put a large budget at once, such as 999999, as this will easily exceed the cost. If you do this, you may be the next negative example...

Author: Aunt Ning

Source: Sanlitun Information Flow