Budget tips: how to choose the correct budget for your digital display campaigns

Here we’ll run through what to consider.

There is no one-size-fits-all choice when it comes to digital display campaigns. There are a variety of factors to consider including the overall size of your advertising budget and how this needs to be allocated cross-channel. You also need to consider the objectives behind your advertising and what increased spend could potentially mean for performance.

Campaign duration will also impact how much you need to spend. Remember that a budget that works for a shorter campaign won’t necessarily cut it for longer activity.

Deciding on an appropriate budget

With any programmatic auction, the question is always, “How much do I need to pay to get the best impressions without spending over the odds?”

If, for example, you set your CPM too low, your adverts will only get served on lower quality placements and it could hinder access to the audiences that are right for your brand. When you set your CPM correctly, this gives your campaign the opportunity to win the most relevant impressions, capturing the audiences that are the perfect fit for your product or service.

Well don’t fear, the Fluid Ads platform offers intuitive UI, to guide you through setting your campaign bidding strategy. Here’s how it works:

1. Set your total campaign budget
2. Set your campaign duration

The platform will automatically calculate the daily budget for the whole campaign. Furthermore, a new feature means that the platform will also set your max CPM bidding strategy based on your campaign criteria and daily spend.

When first setting up a campaign, our Fluid Ads team will be on hand to guide you through the process. Initially for a 90 day period, we recommend a budget of:

• 20k – 55k impressions $60 – $120 per day
• 50 – 100k impressions: $115 – $220 per day
• 100k – 200k impressions: $220 – $435 per day
• 200k – 1,000,000 impressions: $435 – $2,155 per day

Pricing models

Pricing models vary in the industry, let’s look at the two most common ones:

CPM – The agency or publisher sell inventory at a certain price for every 1000 impressions. For example, a common price advertisers pay to an agency is $8 CPM, so that’s costing just $8 for every thousand ads displayed to the target audience.

However, the potential problem here, is that the advertiser doesn’t know what the ads are actually costing the agency, so what budget is being spent on the inventory and what is pocketed by the agency.

Ads impressions can be bought for as little as $1-2 CPM, so for a budget of $10,000, this could mean as little as $1,250 is being spent on buying digital ad space.

Management fee – A more transparent pricing model is to charge a percentage of ad budget as a fee. For example, a fee of between 30-40% is commonly charged for smaller budgets and will scale down for larger budgets. In this scenario, the advertiser gets full transparency on where their ads are shown and how much they cost.

Remember, media margins vary depending on several factors, including how many tactics you use in your campaign, so make sure you speak to your supplier beforehand to know what they are.

This pricing model delivers higher volume and higher quality inventory for the advertising budget, with no hidden costs. Needless to say, here at Fluid Ads we work on margin to ensure transparency for all our clients.

Getting your targeting right

Increased budget doesn’t always mean an increase in performance. Targeting is essential to ensure you get the right bang for your buck from your campaigns.

By bringing an element of precision to your targeting you can guarantee that only the right users see your ads. This increases the opportunity to drive higher click-through rates and ultimately boost campaign performance.

The Fluid Ads platform offers a range of targeting options to tailor your digital display campaigns with additional services including:

• Geotargeting
• Keyword targeting
• Contextual targeting
• Retargeting
• Demographic targeting
• Knowing when to increase your budget

To get the most value from your digital display advertising, it’s important to continue to evaluate and iterate your process as you go.

Crucial to the success of your campaigns is to understand what works in terms of campaign creative, timing, messaging and call to action. The right insights through enhanced reporting is essential.

It’s also key to know when you should push certain messaging and creatives with your audience and when to increase your spend.

Knowing when to raise your budget at the right time can truly impact the traction of your campaigns. As timing is everything, you should consider an increase in budget around key events and launches, including:

• New product launches
• Peak sales periods
• Brand awareness campaigns
• Promotions and offers

External factors may also impact your need for flexibility with your digital display campaigns. Whilst seasonality will always play its part, factors like the weather, political events and sporting events may necessitate a need to tailor both your campaign messaging and your spend.