7 Advanced Targeting Tips for a Successful Affiliate Campaign

Location-targeted ads alone generated more than 15 billion US dollars in 2018. While this is impressive, it’s just one of the many targeting options you have at your disposal. Successful affiliates rely on a variety of techniques to build great campaigns, and targeted ads are always close to the top of the list.

Besides location, you can implement targeted ads based on the browser, OS, device, carrier, interests, specific keywords, and even the budget you have available. But, with so many options at your disposal, setting up the right options can be extremely challenging.

In this article, we’ll go over 7 advanced tips to help you get the most out of your targeted ads.

How Can Ad Targeting Affect Your Campaign?

Consumers absolutely love to receive personalized information in the form of professional tips, referrals from friends, and even targeted ads.

Instead of blasting every possible user with your creatives, targeting allows you to choose which users get to see your adverts based on different characteristics. This can boost the performance of your campaign, increase your profit margins, and reduce the cost per acquisition for each lead or customer you get.

7 Advanced Targeting Tips for a Successful Affiliate Campaign

Targeting can help ensure that your ads are only displayed to consumers who meet the criteria you set, which should increase the chances of generating a lead or conversion. Below, we’ve put together 7 advanced tips to help ensure you use your targeting setting effectively.

Learn as Much as You Can About Your Audience

Even though it sounds like a cliche, your audience holds the key to the right targeting settings. The best way to know what filters you want to apply is to know as much information as you can about your audience. For instance, you should find out if your audience is more likely to choose a particular OS, device, or browser and then use this information to your advantage.

Start with Simple GEO Settings and Experiment Slowly

Location targeting is the most popular and one of the best ways to focus on a relevant audience. Unfortunately, many affiliates target areas that are too big or too small, which translates to underperforming ads. Instead of trying to apply random strategies, start with a big area that’s relevant and slowly work on narrowing down and adding new locations as you get new information.

Always Use OS and Device Targeting for Mobile Campaigns

If you’re running a mobile campaign, you should always use device and OS targeting. There are mobile apps and other products that only work on specific devices or operating systems, this targeting will help ensure that your budget is spent on users who will be interested.

Identify Interests and Trends that Relate to Your Industry

Keeping an eye out for market trends can help you set the right targeting options. This is especially important for affiliates in the fashion, nutra, and the retail industry because these are all influenced heavily by new designs and ever-changing movements.

Filter Traffic by Browser

Internet browsers may look similar, but there are some key differences that can affect the performance of your campaign. You should monitor the behavior of your ad based on each browser and narrow down your setting to only target the platforms that deliver the best results.

Set the Right Frequency to Stretch Your Budget

Aside from targeting based on consumer characteristics, you can also adjust the frequency of your ads. This will help them appear steadily throughout the day, rather than running out early on. Targeting by frequency and budget caps is also helpful for affiliates that have a limited budget because it gives them greater control over when their ad will actually appear.

Optimize as Soon as You Have Enough Data

Optimization is one of the most important parts of any affiliate campaign, but you need to wait until you have enough data to make the information valuable.

Remember, this will depend heavily on your particular industry. But as a regular rule of thumb, you should wait at least two weeks before optimizing in order to eliminate the influence of weekends and seasonal events.

That said, if you notice your campaign is not getting any traffic, you should immediately take a look at your targeting setting as your settings may be too narrow.

Launch Your Affiliate Campaign Today!

Learning how to employ targeted ads properly can help catapult your campaign to greener pastures. The advanced tips above should give you a better idea of how to implement ad targeting in a more efficient way and improve the performance of your campaign.

If you want to learn more about our DSP, get in touch with us and we’ll be glad to help.