Behaviorally Targeted Campaign Best Practices

This article outlines some best practices for creating behaviorally targeted segments to reach customized audiences for a specific advertiser or category.

Overview

Amobee recommends the following when setting up behaviorally targeted segments:

• Consider using behavioral targeting when there is a performance goal.
• If you are uncertain about your true audience, start the campaign with less behavioral targeting, run an Audience Insight report after the first 1,000 actions, then adjust behavioral targeting segments accordingly.
• A minimum bid of $3.00 CPM is recommended to win bids in premium inventory. For example, if you are targeting a segment that has a cost of $1.10 CPM, the package will actually bid at $1.90. In this case, a minimum bid of $4.10 is recommended for the package to win bids in premium inventory with the segment targeted.
• Using the behavioral data of consumers helps boost user experience. The more relevant your message, the more useful it is for the consumer. Delivering relevant messages to a variety of consumers is the most important function of segment building.
• Campaigns connects to various third-party data providers and aggregates campaign-driven data to help make your custom behavior targeting segments reach the most qualified and closely matched users, regardless of complexity.
• Behavioral targeting can be manual or algorithmic.
  • If you use manual targeting, you must know enough about your target audience to select specific data points that create an accurate behavioral profile.
  • Algorithmic targeting is constructed by Campaigns using the Audience Extender, or suite-generated predictive targeting segments.

Performance Optimization Best Practices

Campaigns uses behavioral targeting with Automated Bidding pricing to maximize performance and return on investment. Depending on the bid amount, only a certain range of inventory will be available for the audience that makes up your targeted segment.

Amobee recommends the following performance optimization tactics:

• When accessing real-time bidding (RTB) inventory, Automated Bidding campaigns allow the Campaigns module to hand pick each impression and maximize delivery and performance for the selected behavioral targeting segment.
• Use Bid Forecaster to choose the optimal bid and frequency settings available within your budget.
• If your budget cannot be spent due to a unique user base with low delivery forecasting, then use the Audience Extender to select additional "act alike" segments that will increase your audience.
• Consider lowering your bid amount to make room for data costs that will result in a much larger target audience, provided it's an Automated Bidding campaign and the delivery can be met.

Behaviorally  Targeted Segments Best Practices

The Behavior Targeted segment rule builder uses Boolean Logic to join and nest multiple sources of data for constructing custom profiles. 

Determine the following when configuring segment targeting rules:

• Which sets of criteria must be evaluated together?
• Which segments are subsets of other segments?

Once this is determined, you can link segments using the Boolean values by joining and indenting lines for nesting.

A useful way of seeing a complex segment built-out in the rule builder is to use the extend feature and select proposed segments within the Audience Extender. Once applied, the appropriate configuration for behavior rules will be displayed.

Using Third-Party Data Best Practices

Using third-party data for your behavioral targeting segments is a budget consideration versus performance goals. If you have the budget to facilitate the cost of the data, you can adjust down the inventory budget to accommodate for data costs. The investment may be lucrative as long as you have accurate audience insights to support your data purchase.

There are a variety of pricing models for using third-party data, including Cost-Per-User Contracts (CPU), Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM), and a hybrid of the following:

• CPU Contracts: This model charges a small fee for each unique user in the segment that you purchase.
• CPM Contracts: Similar to CPM inventory purchases, this model charges per thousand impressions.
• Hybrid Contracts: This model charges a flat fee for a certain number of impressions and/or users, then a per-user fee.