As former game devs, our goal at Chartboost is to arm as many indie developers out there with the best technology and support to build a successful business. Diving into the advertising realm can feel daunting, but we”re here to help!
As an advertiser, your goal is to acquire a healthy volume of high quality players at the right price. Our platform optimizes based on the best return for the publisher, which is measured by eCPM. eCPM is a combination of install rate (IR), click-through-rate (CTR), and your bid that reflects the overall competitiveness of your campaign. So the better your ad performs the more high quality traffic you receive. It also means that the higher your install rate and CTR, the lower you have to bid to receive similar volumes of traffic. Below are 5 tips to increase performance and maximize your return of your campaign.
1. Optimize Your Creatives.
We suggest you run 3-4 different creatives at a time, and refresh them at most once a week, at least once a month. New interstitials provide a fresh new perspective on your game and can enhance your CTR, versus old creative that users have seen repeatedly. For helpful design reference points, you can check out our monthly ?Top Creatives? feature where we highlight the best performing creatives on our platform.To determine which creatives are performing best for you, we advise you to optimize your interstitials based on CTR performance. Head to the Chartboost Dashboard, check out your campaign analytics and export your Group by Creative report. If one creative has a much higher CTR than others give it a higher priority. If a creative is performing poorly, lower the priority or remove it completely and bring in a fresh creative!
Also, be sure to learn how to A-B test your creatives at our Help Center.
2. Filter Apps.
You want to work with publishers that offer quality users who install your game. Head to the Chartboost Dashboard, take a look at the analytics tab and generate a ?Group by App? Report? to see the performance of each publishing app in your campaign. By sorting these publishers according to impressions received and looking at their eCPM you can identify apps with high impressions and low eCPM that should be filtered. We recommend filtering anything in the top 10-15 apps with an eCPM of less than $1.By filtering, you allow higher performing apps (that are helping to drive more clicks or installs) to display your interstitials, and could drastically improve the performance of your campaign. Here?s step-by-step instructions on how to export Chartboost reports to filter partners.
3. Bid Competitively.
Bidding at the minimum rate may seem like a way to cut back on costs, but a low bid also means a lower eCPM and fewer impressions. We advise you to start bidding at the network average and adjust based on the amount of traffic you receive from the performance of your ad.Our handy insights page can fill you in on average iOS and Android CPI rates worldwide on our network. If you start your campaign with a strong and competitive bid, you will be in much better shape to optimize than those who start at a low bid.
4. Target by Country.
Player spending habits vary by country. A player in Malaysia may spend a lot less on your game than someone in the United States, so you may want to bid less on users in the former. With our country tiering feature and data from our insights page, you can create specific targets and bid competitively for each region or country. The idea is to bid smart so you?re spending wisely.To create different bids for each country or tier, you need to create a new campaign target for each of those countries/tiers.
5. Target by Device.
If you plan on running your campaign over multiple devices (iPad, iPhone, or iPod), consider targeting each device separately. Just as you’d want to target different countries with their own CPI and daily budget, you may want to target devices with their own bid/budget. If you group devices altogether in one target, and your interstitials perform poorly on iPod, you could drag your overall eCPM down. If you instead target devices separately, you can analyze and optimize the resulting data separately, and you?re also spending smartly. Be sure to access your Campaign Edit page in the Chartboost Dashboard to set your targets appropriately.If you have any more questions about Advertising at Chartboost, don?t hesitate to reach out to us at support@chartboost.com. Good luck!
