CPA Goal by Adsterra is a rules-based tool you can apply to CPM or CPC traffic to optimize it by spending and conversion criteria. You now have a powerful instrument for improving ROI and reducing costs while hitting your KPIs.
How CPA Goal by Adsterra works
First, you come up with the main criteria to unlink a placement. The first one is the critical spending per ad placement. The following two criteria are supportive of the main one:
eCPA or the average cost per conversion;
number of conversions.
Second, you create a rule containing two criteria: spending and eCPA per placement, or spending and the number of conversions per placement.
After you activate the rule, CPA Goal by Adsterra will automatically check and unlink placements that don’t meet your conditions.
How to create CPA Goal rules
There are two ways you can add new CPA Goal rules. The first one will add a Custom rule to one campaign, and the second will allow for creating universal rules you can later apply to several campaigns.
Important: Make sure you set up conversion tracking before creating and enabling CPA Goal rules. That’s the only way to track ad placement’s performance. Check all tracking tokens you can add to your landing page’s URL.
Create a Custom rule while setting up or editing a campaign
If you need to add a rule to a new campaign, click Campaigns > Create to start setting up.
To add a rule to an existing campaign, click Campaign > My campaigns and pick the CPM/CPC campaign you want to optimize with CPA Goal.
Scroll to Advanced Settings from the campaign’s page (Step 4).
In the CPA Goal section, pick Custom for the CPA rule and create a rule’s name.
Define the critical spending amount when the placement shall be unlinked and enter it in the Spent field.
Choose the Optimization parameter from the dropdown. It can be either eCPA or the number of conversions.
Next, add the eCPA value or the critical number of conversions and choose the operator “equal to” or “greater than or equal to.” Finally, click ADD.
After you click ADD, the rule will immediately become active for your existing campaign. If it’s a new campaign you add a rule to, CPA Goal optimization will be activated according to the time of start you define in Step 1, General settings.
Every Custom rule you create from the Campaign’s page will only be applied to this particular campaign. To create universal rules, use the second way.
Create universal rules from the CPA Goal Rules page
This way is helpful when you want to add universal rules you can then apply to any of your ad campaigns.
From the vertical menu on the left, choose Campaigns > CPA Goal rules.
Enter a rule’s name (up to 20 characters, A-Z, 0-9), add the critical spending amount ($) per one placement, choose the Optimization parameter, and define its value. Finally, click ADD RULE.
In the Current rules section, you can check and adjust all rules created.
To make changes, hit the
icon and edit the rule. Changes you make will be applied immediately.
How to enable or replace existing CPA Goal rules
When you need to enable or replace an existing CPA Goal rule in one of your CPM or CPC campaigns, open the campaign and scroll down to the CPA Goal section (the Advanced settings step.)
In the CPA Goal section, find and choose the CPA rule from the dropdown.
How to edit CPA Goal rules
You can easily edit CPA Goal rules.
If you added a Custom new rule on the Campaign’s page, please open the campaign and adjust the rule’s parameters. After you hit SUBMIT, the rule will be updated immediately, and the campaign will continue running with the updates made.
Please note: from your Campaign’s page, you can edit only Custom rules. The changes you make will be applied to one ad campaign.
To edit universal rules, open the CPA Goal Rules page and adjust a rule you need.
Please note: once you edit a universal rule from the CPA Goal Rules page, it will be updated in all campaigns where it’s active right now. If you want to make changes within one campaign, open it and edit the universal rule’s parameters–then, it’ll be updated for this campaign only.
Where to check unlinked ad placements
When you activate a rule, CPA Goal starts optimizing CPM or CPC traffic. It will unlink ad placements that fail to meet your criteria.
You can monitor and manage all of the unlinked placements.
Open your current campaign with an active CPA Goal rule. Move to the Advanced settings section. Under the CPA Goal section, you have a table with all unlinked placements.
Operations with the unlinked placements
Find the placement by its ID
Check the date when it was unlinked
Remove IDs from the table to return this traffic to your campaign
Copy and export all or selected placement IDs for future use (e.g., to create a blacklist)
When to use CPA Goal by Adsterra
The best use case for CPA Goal is a CPM/CPC campaign with loads of traffic and fast conversion (e.g., install, first deposit, signup). Adsterra advertisers apply the tool for Ecommerce, iGaming, Software, VPN, and many other CPM or CPC-based campaigns.
When CPA Goal is a questionable tool
You need significant CPM/CPC traffic volumes to optimize it for conversions. We don’t recommend using CPA Goal with few impressions of clicks. You can check with our Traffic Chart to be sure about the current number of impressions or use Traffic Estimator on the Campaign’s page.
Another arguable case comes with complex and long-run conversions like orders with a following confirmation, double deposits, or click-to-call conversions.