Campaign Setup FAQ: Part 2 of 2

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Below we answer the most commonly asked questions surrounding campaign setup. This post covers Persona Targeting, Device Type, Inventory Type & Viewability, Domain, Brand Safety, Ad Groups and Ad Sizes, and UTM Parameters.

Please click here for part 1, which covers Campaign Budget, CPMs, Campaign Flight Dates, Dayparting, and Frequency Cap.

For more details about 6sense Creative Services, visit this discussion post.

Persona Targeting 

Q: What are the best practices for persona targeting? 

A: To ensure the greatest reach, we recommend that you remove persona targeting for awareness campaigns. This level of targeting is best used for middle- and late-journey campaigns, depending on campaign objective. When setting persona targeting criteria, select as many personas as would be relevant for the service or offering. 

Device Type, Inventory Type & Viewability, and Domain 

Q: What should be selected for device and inventory type? 

A: If your goal is to optimize reach, we recommend selecting all device types (‘Desktop,’ ‘Mobile,’ and ‘Tablet’), and selecting ‘App & Web’ as inventory type. Then apply the ‘Global Exclusion List + Campaign Exclusion List’ to remove any domains or apps that don’t meet your desired criteria. 

Alternatively, you can set your campaign to target specific device types or ‘Web only’ if you prefer to avoid mobile apps (but still run on mobile websites).   

Q: What is viewability and when should I use the ‘Optimize for viewability’ targeting feature? 

A: Advertising Viewability measures how often your ads appeared for enough time—and in a prominent position—for your audience to see them. Viewability rates enhance campaign and creative-level reporting, so you can better assess brand impact and manage quality control for the inventory you purchase. 

Use the ‘Optimize for viewability’ feature if you want to target impressions that are more likely to be viewable. 6sense achieves this by dynamically restricting bids on impressions that are predicted to have a low chance of viewability. Note that selecting this feature will limit reach and is not advised for highly targeted campaigns. 

Q: Which domain(s) should be selected? 

A: If you are looking for premium inventory, we recommend using the ‘6sense Preferred Publisher List,’ a curated selection of domains that meet certain performance and ad environment criteria. If you are utilizing the Preferred Publisher List, note that CPMs typically should be set higher to remain competitive (bids typically range from $8-$15). Also note that selecting this list will limit reach and is not advised for highly targeted campaigns.

If you are aiming for maximum possible reach at the lowest possible price points, we recommend applying the ‘Global Exclusion List + Campaign Exclusion List.’ This will allow you to run on all available domains and apps, but apply exclusions for any specific sources that you’d prefer to avoid, either at the account or campaign level.

Brand Safety

Q: What is Brand Safety? 

A: By default, 6sense runs fraud prevention and brand safety controls (‘Standard Protection’) against extreme content on all campaigns. The ‘Standard Protection + Block Additional Categories’ feature provides additional levels of control to exclude categories of inventory you do not want your brand associated with by preventing your creatives from running adjacent to such content. This feature is only necessary if there are certain sensitivities. 

Ad Groups and Ad Sizes 

Q: How many ad groups should be launched within a campaign? 

A: We suggest launching at least 2 ad groups with distinct creatives per campaign, grouped thematically by messaging or design. (We strongly recommend always including a 300x250 in each ad group since that is the most commonly served ad size.) This allows for A/B testing which makes it easier to make holistic assessments about the effectiveness of the messaging or design, and iterate on winning ad creatives to optimize performance. This also helps to track performance more effectively and make changes to ensure optimal delivery, which ultimately helps divert spend to the most-engaging ads and drive up CTR.  

Q: How many ad sizes should run in a campaign?  

A: We strongly recommend always including a 300x250 since that is the most commonly served ad size. To not dilute impressions across too many ads while also not impacting delivery, we recommend running 3 to 4 different ad sizes. 

Q: What are the top-performing ad sizes? 

A: We generally see the highest CTR on the 300x250 (MPU), 320x50 (Mobile Leaderboard), 300x600 (Monster MPU), and 728x90 (Leaderboard). For several reasons, including ad placement, 160x600 (Skyscraper) ads tend to have a lower CTR, so we generally recommend omitting this size if you are trying for click engagement. Other performance-based outcomes are highly variable. 

Q: Where are the top-performing ad sizes typically displayed? 

A: 300x250 ads can run on desktop, mobile, and tablet. 320x50 ads are mobile only. 300x600 and 728x90 ads can run on desktop and tablet, however, the 300x600 is mostly a desktop format. Though not top performing, 160x600 ads can run on desktop and tablet, being mostly a desktop format.  

Q: How are the top-performing ad sizes determined? 

A: We review benchmark metrics across all 6sense advertisers to determine the top-performing ad sizes, in terms of both delivery and engagement. 

Q: Why don’t all the ad sizes deliver equally? 

A: The most commonly served ad size is 300x250 because it can run on desktop, mobile, and tablet, and most publisher page templates can support running this size in the right rail or within the body content of an article. The second most commonly available ad size is 320x50, but note that this size only runs on mobile pages. All things being equal, you will likely see impressions skew towards those two ad sizes for that reason. 

Q: What determines which ad size will be delivered? 

A: Publishers design their page templates to support specific formats and sizes for advertising. Importantly, not all pages can support all sizes, and certain devices can only support certain sizes. When audiences visit a page, the publisher will make one or more advertising impressions available in programmatic auctions. Each of these auction opportunities includes information about which sizes are allowed (note that most often, there is no choice since only one size is permitted) and 6sense will submit a bid on your behalf if we have a matching size that meets all targeting criteria. 

UTM Parameters 

Q: What are the best practices for UTM parameters?  

UTM parameters can be appended at the end of landing page URLs to help analytic services track the post-click performance of different sources, campaigns, or creatives. 

We recommend using 6sense as the utm_source, as this is the highest-level breakdown and allows you to filter and track 6sense traffic.  

utm_medium is a reference to the type of campaign you are running (display, search, social, etc.) and is dependent on that. 

utm_campaign is an important field to include if you want to track campaign-specific performance. For more consistent tracking, we recommend using the campaign name or campaign ID in this field. 

Written by Robin Strauss, Tony Mamone & Laurie Gallardo