Enhancing your bidding efficiency with DV360 and custom bidding

Define how much your impressions are worth with Custom Bidding. Implementing the tool, which has been a game-changer to the programmatic community, allows advertisers to better align their campaign objectives and business goals, thanks to custom algorithms and automated processes. 

What is Custom Bidding?

New functionalities emerge every day that allow us to automate processes, save time and improve the quality of information through machine learning. Custom Bidding is a mixture of these characteristics. Unlike standard or automatic bids, with Custom Bidding, we can customise the algorithm based on real business objectives. Through a script created in DV360, we will provide more insights into the algorithm to apply machine learning optimally and uniquely for each client and campaign.  

What is Custom Bidding, and how does it contribute to our campaigns?

Custom Bidding combines our business insights with Google’s algorithm. This union between campaign insights and objectives, alongside Google’s machine learning, will allow us to align our goals with the advertiser’s business objectives.  

How does it work?

Very simple, you must first ask yourself two questions:

• What is your goal? If your objective is a standard CPM, CB is not necessary. On the contrary, if you want to optimise towards other goals and KPIs, you can consider CB as a solution,
• Do you want to manage the campaign manually? In case your priority is not to manually configure bids, and you prefer that Google’s algorithm maximise the effectiveness of our campaigns, we recommend applying CB.

Secondly, we identify the signals and set our objectives (KPIs). Advertisers must understand what they are measuring and how they are going to optimise based on it. This takes us to step three, designing the script, which does not require a coding expert.

 These are the three main aggregate models; each of them applies to the different use cases that we will discuss below:

• Sum-aggregate: In all cases, add all the weights.
• Max_Aggregate: In all cases, it only considers the maximum weight.
• First_match_aggregate: For all conversions, find the first interaction that occurs within the script sequence.

Once the script has been created in DV360, we must assign a bidding algorithm to our test insertion order (replacing the non-personalised options offered by the platform), the algorithm will optimise based on the rules established in our script. 

Suppose you have already completed the previous steps. In that case, it is time to select your script as the bid algorithm within our insertion order and start checking the results between the test insertion order and the new insertion order with the custom algorithm.  

Use cases

To help us better understand each possible scenario, we have six previously defined use cases:

• Weighted Conversions: All goals contribute to the achievement of the final objective. We can give weights for each step of the conversion funnel, prioritising those actions that have the most value for the advertiser.
• Activity Value: Unlike weighing only based on specific events such as floodlights, this model allows us to optimise based on custom u-variables. We can give different weights to our custom variables collected in the Campaign manager to increase the profit.
• Transaction ROAS: We can use the value of each product or service to adjust sales value. The advantage is differentiating the sales values ​​by product, not all sales are worth the same.
• Google Analytics: With GA360, we can weigh based on different events within our site, as long as we have a premium account and have all those goals configured. For example, users who have placed an order are more valued or those who have spent more time browsing our website.
• Brand Signals: We use branding signals such as viewability, full video, and others to make the most of this knowledge in our campaigns.
• Unified Conversions: With the help of Campaign Manager and Google Analytics, we are able to collect all that information that we cannot measure, only using floodlights. For example, in a case of weighted conversions, we can give more weight to the one with the most value with offline conversions. In this case, we can unify online and offline conversions under the same algorithm, giving them the same value.

Each of the cases is unique and will vary depending on the weighting we give to each step, action or sales value.  

Our current digital realm requires marketers to personalise their campaigns to ensure that they meet the needs of their customers. Custom bidding provides flexibility and is the right tool to assist marketers in customising their bidding strategies and improving the performance of their campaigns. 

If you want to know more about Custom bidding or DV360 and the Google Marketing Platform tech stack, email us at info@makingscience.com.

Combine your business insights with the Google algorithms and get the most out of your campaigns. ?

In our next Growing with Google session, we will be delving into the benefits of custom bidding and how this solution removes the hassle of manually setting your own bid prices.

Sign up and join Alberto González Fernández, Senior Adtech Consultant, on the 12th of April at 3 PM (GMT).