Optimization of any ad campaign is a real art. An experienced Media buyer can spend hours a day on optimizing his media spend and find out new tricks and twists to improve the media spend.

Today, I want to teach you a few of my most common tactics and tips that will help you optimize your media like a pro.

First, a few words about optimization: with ad campaign optimization, we are trying to get more out of our media spend. Our goal is to improve all metrics across the campaign, but most of our focus is on increasing the ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and bringing the main CPA (Cost Per Action) down. 
To put it simply, I would like to get better results from my current budget. 

Before you begin with optimization, make sure to define what your Ad Campaign Objective is and set up the pixels correctly. Learn more here.

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How to Optimize Your Ad Campaign
To Increase ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)

#1 Set up an auto reporting system

To track your numbers correctly, set up an automatic report that will be sent to you every morning with all the metrics you need. 

#2 Track the main KPI on your own report

To track the main KPI (key performance indicator) or objective in real time, I create for my own report with daily, weekly, and monthly results.

Because I run a high volume ad campaign with at least few ad platforms, I will track my KPIs on my own report that takes the raw data from a few automatic reports and creates one combined story. If you use a DSP for all of your ads, this will be reasonably easy to set up. Other media buyers use reporting tools like Tubla.

#3 Learn your data

Dive into the data every few days. Breakdown your report by different variable segments to better understand your ads and their performance. 

#4 Get the story behind your numbers

Data and numbers are great! But to better understand your audience and your ad performance think about the user’s persona – who is he or she? Where do they spend most of their time online? What information are they searching for? Understanding the story behind this will help you find new opportunities for placements and optimizations. 

#5 Don’t go with the default setting

When you set up your ad campaign, don’t choose the default setting by the ad platform. Go over the setup and options to select the options that work best for you. 

#6 Play with the bids

Once you have enough data and your campaign has been live for a few weeks, play with the bids. Increase or decrease your CPA or CPC bid slowly and investigate the effect this has on your overall performance and ROAS.  

#7 Creative, Creative, Creative!

We all know that sometimes it’s all about the creative. Run as many images and text combinations as you can. Mix it up and keep the ads which perform the best.

I would also advise checking as many ad types as possible (Images, Gifs, HTML, responsive, etc.). 

#8 Test the platform recommendations

Google Ads, as well as Facebook ads, will often notify you about suggestions and recommendations for your ad campaign. Check it out and run a test with the suggested change. From my experience, it can be beneficial sometimes, but in some cases, it might hurt your campaign.

#9 Find your opportunities for optimization 

There are so many opportunities for optimization. Here are a few ones that you can try: Days, Hours, Placements, Devices, Locations, Gender, Age, Parenting status and much more.

This is especially true if you run a large scale campaign ($100K budget or more). Try to find the sweet spot where ads convert to money and adjust your bids accordingly.  

#10 Explore new markets

If you run an ad campaign to increase sales, why don’t you try new markets? Running online campaigns offers you the opportunity to market your goods or online services to any country in the world. There are considerable differences in media costs between different countries. Take advantage of this fact to explore new markets that will improve your overall performance.

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