[Case Study] The Power of Smart Bidding: TargetCPA

Adding the target CPA bidding to your advertising strategy is a great way to automate costs and maximize conversions, ensuring that your ad budget is spent wisely, within the average values of each conversion. We’ve talked about this great feature in the past, however, we never fully showed you the real magic. So maybe, it’s time!

To put it simply, our TargetCPA bidding is a smart algorithm(based on machine learning and AI optimizations) that automatically works to maximize conversion volumes while minimising costs. This is done by identifying the best sources for your offer and adjusting the prices based on the segment that converts so that your campaign will be profitable.

Campaign setup:

Here is a concrete case study from one of our first affiliate marketers from our network which created a TargetCPA campaign and who was kind enough to let us share his results with everybody.

With this in mind, our campaign end goal was to automatically maximise conversions while saving time as well as maintaining overall profitable costs. 

It is important to note that the Mondiad TargetCPA algorithm works in 3 stages (learning, learning&adjusting, working) and the campaign automatically adjusts after the learning phase.

How can you tell your Target CPA is working? 

We recommend our advertisers to set a realistic Target CPA bid for their offer, to make it competitive and let our system find segments for the desired value.

In the learning phase, our algorithm will look for segments where the Target CPA is approximately equal to the real Target CPA. For this reason, in these first few days after the campaign launch, you can expect a bigger spent while our system is looking for those resources.

Lastly, when the Mondiad Target CPA algorithm finds the right segments for your setup, it automatically adjusts bids to range in the desired Target CPA value. 

Thus, if your target CPA is set appropriately, you should see it fluctuating around your desired cost. 

Optimizations done & results evolution:

Focusing on a single campaign with enough data to understand effectiveness relatively quickly, we were able to identify that the campaign was not starting with a bid lower than the Target CPA and it tried to adjust the values. Then, starting with the first week, the system has already taken some actions and was giving results.

As illustrated,  the Avg. CPC for these zones are different, and the system was adjusting them based on the profitable zones. 

Now, let’s look again at the reports, this time checking the stats for the whole month and see the differences. Notice how where we don’t have success, the Avg.CPC is almost 0.

This time, we can see that the system is no longer bidding on zones that are underperforming. 

Here is an interesting example, to be more clear: The SubID highlighted has started with an Avg. CPC bid of “$0.012” and after 1 month it was decreased to “$0.003” because it did not perform as expected. 

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***Results of the case study:

As you can see in the reports below, after a month of running this offer, we have managed to eliminate non-converting traffic and identify optimal bids that bring in conversions at profitable costs.

After a month of gathering data, we have come to the conclusion that our target CPA is leading to profitable returns, indicating that our campaigns are successful. Although the revenue is not much bigger than the spent, note that the campaign is still running and adjusting.

Mastering Mondiad’s TargetCPA is an ongoing process, that requires a bit of time(more than 3 days) for the system to find the profitable segments, however, once you start the campaign, you can just watch the magic happening! ✨🧙🔮