Setting your performance goal is the most important step in the campaign process as it will inform every other aspect of your campaign. 

When you create a campaign in Campaign Manager, LiveIntent's advertiser platform, you will choose your performance goal.

Setting Your Performance Goal 

LiveIntent uses a “second-price auction” or dynamic CPM. In a second-price auction, the winning bidder pays $0.01 more than the second-highest bidder instead of paying the full bid price. With this model, you can set your goal as high as you are comfortable based on the true value of your campaign but you will pay the lowest possible price.

Please note that if your performance goal is too low, the audience you want to reach will not see your ads. 

Line Item Details

Campaign Name: Enter the name you would like the campaign to be.

Conversion Tracker: If you are using a conversion tracker, enter in that name.

IAB Category:  This will automatically populate from the advertiser you're working under.

Start Date: The start date for your line item. 

End Date: The end date for your line item.

Daily Budget/Daily Cap:

• Daily Budget is the daily spend amount for a line item using the Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions performance goals. The Daily Budget amount will be spent in full every day.
• Daily Cap is the maximum daily spend limit for a line item using the Achieve CPA performance goal. The Daily Cap will never be exceeded but daily spend may not reach the Daily Cap limit every day.

Line Item Lifetime Budget: The spend amount for the entire duration of the line item.

• Lifetime Budget is automatically calculated once the start/end dates and Daily Budget/Daily Cap are set for the line item.
• The Lifetime Budget formula is (line item duration * Daily Budget/Daily Cap)

Adjusting Line Item End Date or Daily Budget:

• Adjusting the line item end date will proportionately impact your Lifetime Budget. This is because the Lifetime Budget formula takes into account the days remaining for your line item flight. 
  • For example, if you extend your line item flight, your Lifetime Budget will increase. If you shorten your line item flight, your Lifetime Budget will decrease.
• There is a similar effect when adjusting your Daily Budget, also due to the Lifetime Budget formula accounting for the days remaining in your line item flight.
  • For example, increasing your Daily Budget will increase your Lifetime Budget. Decreasing your Daily Budget will decrease your Lifetime Budget. 

Types of Performance Goals 

Maximize Clicks

• Optimization: Clicks
• Objective: Brand Awareness, Website Visits, Engagement
• When to use: When you want to drive high-quality traffic to your site at the lowest possible Cost Per Click (CPC) while spending your budget in full.
  • A great option for any top-of-funnel campaigns that want to drive high-quality and “right-priced” traffic. While this does not take a CPA Goal into account, you can still track conversions as a secondary KPI.

Maximize Conversions

• Optimization: Conversions
• Objective: Website conversions (email signup, product purchase, form fill, lead generation)
• When to use: If you want to achieve the lowest possible Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) while evenly spending your budget in full.

Achieve CPA

• Optimization: Conversions
• Objective: Website conversions (email signup, product purchase, form fill, lead generation)
• When to Use: If you are willing to spend as much as possible on any given day while coming in at or below the specified Cost Per Goal. Keep in mind the only lever to pull to drive scale is adjusting the CPA goal.
• Line Item Settings:
  • Daily Cap is required to save a line item.
  • Daily Cap: We suggest setting a minimum of 10x the CPA goal.
    • Example: If the CPA goal is $40, then Daily Cap is $400 (10 x $40 CPA)
    • If 0 is inserted, your campaign will not spend.
      

Achieve CPA: Best Practices

When to increase the daily cap spend:

• If the line item is hitting its daily cap spend on a consistent basis while coming in at or below the CPA Goal.
• Increasing the daily cap spend without hitting it on a consistent basis will NOT increase scale unless you increase the CPA Goal as well.