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As a programmatic trader, one role among many is to help reduce costs for clients.
If you have handled any cost based Campaign KPI—whether it’s CPM, CPC, CPV, or CPA—you would know proper optimization becomes important to maintain peak performance and save some cost for our clients.
If you’re finding it challenging to hit your targets, I’m here to help guide your strategy. I previously shared a deep dive into DV360 CPM optimization; today, we’ll shift focus to the performance end of the funnel: how to optimize your DV360 campaigns for CPA.
Today, I’ll share 13 CPA optimization strategies that have worked for me in the past. I’ll also share some bonus tips towards the end of the article and FAQ’s to cover any missed queries you might have. So, make sure to read the whole article so that you don’t miss any important points.
But, stop!
Before we kick off CPA optimization on DV360, your campaign needs more than just a budget—it needs a solid foundation. To hit peak performance, make sure these three non-negotiables are locked in first:
The Pre-Launch Checklist to Optimize DV360 Campaign for CPA
1. Bulletproof Tracking: You must have Floodlight tags active on your site. This isn’t just about counting sales; it’s the heartbeat of your campaign that feeds conversion data back to DV360 and builds your first-party data powerhouse.
2. Data Fuel (Historical Performance): While not strictly mandatory, having historical conversion data is a game-changer. The more data the system has from past campaigns, the faster your bidding strategy can “learn” who your real buyers are.
3. The 15-Day Rule: Conversions aren’t a “short burst” game. Your flight duration should be at least 15 days. Why? Because the DV360 algorithm needs time to crunch the numbers, learn from user behavior, and optimize for those high-value actions.
Now, let’s start to with DV360 Campaign optimization for CPA
1. Use Aumoated Bidding Strategy: Conversion-based campaign must use an automated bidding strategy. For the Conversion Campaign, start with Maximize Conversion for 10 to 15 days, then if you receive some conversion switch to target CPA.
- Maximise Conversion: This bidding strategy tells the algorithm to get as many conversions as possible without worrying about cost.
- Target CPA: This bidding strategy tell system to get as many conversions as possible, but within the set CPA target. Suppose you set a taget CPA of $10, the system would ignore bidding on those audiences where it thinks the CPA would cross your $10 target and bid aggressively for those audiences where it thinks the CPA would be under $10. How to know what tCPA you should keep for your Campaign. Look for the last 30 CPA reports and keep them as your target.
2. Use tCPA smartly: During the initial launch of the Campaign keep CPA twice the actual CPA that you have achieved in your older Campaign to help the bidding strategy with more learning and adjustment. Then, in a few days, you can reduce this CPA to your actual target.
3. Use first-party data: This is a must for conversion-based conversion. Target add to cart, cart abondeners or at least product viewer, and exclude past converters.
4. Get more conversions:
On DV360, high conversion rate is your best friend. High conversion volume and drop in CPA are directly proportional—one feeds the other in a powerful feedback loop.
- Signals for the Win: Every conversion acts as a high-intent signal, telling the DV360 algorithm exactly who your buyers are.
- Aggressive Bidding: As conversion data builds, the system gains the “confidence” to bid more aggressively on similar high-value users, winning the right auctions for less.
- The CPA Drop: This increased efficiency scales your results—bringing in a higher volume of conversions while simultaneously driving down your average CPA.
5. Use frequency cap effectively: Don’t overexpose your ads and don’t under expose too. If you run a reach Campaign under exposure would work since you want to reach more unique users. But, this is not the case for conversion campaigns; the FC cap should be high but not very high, let’s say 3 per day or 2 per day should do the job, or you can stretch to even 4 per day if you are targeting cart abandoners.
6. Use Optimized targeting: This is the most important feature introduced by DV360 to optimize DV360 Campaign for CPA and to scale conversion campaigns. It works best for conversion based Campaign. Give some seed audience to your Campaign then select the optimized targeting on DV360 option below that audience. It will find more audience outside of your seed audience who are most likely to convert. It uses the conversion signal from your Campaign and finds users who would likely be interested in your product, and improve likeliness of your conversion.
7. Improve your site speed: The user experience on your site plays a critical role in a high conversion rate. So make sure your site is loading fast, and proper navigation is in place for visitors to find things quickly. Run some discounts and offers to much needed boost.
8. Use DCO creative: Using dynamic creative optimization increases your chance of users converting more through ads. This optimizes the creative in real time using visitor browsing history and implementing proper CTA on the creative.
9. Set Viewability: Set the viewability settings to a minimum 60% and above. If your ads are not properly seen by your audience, they are less likely to click, and this will impact your conversion performance.
10. Run A/B testing or experiment: Unless you know which CTA is working or which audience is working better, or which color or which button is working well, you would be wasting money on irrelevant ad spends. So set up A/B testing on DV360 and test various elements of the ads or audience. Such as, in one IO keep a different audience and in another a different audience. In one IO keep green color text on ads and in the other IO keep red color text on creative and see which color the audience interact more.
12. Switch to Auto budget allocation: If the KPI is set as CPA at the IO level. This is the most underrated option to optimize DV360 Campaign for CPA that most traders overlook. When you switch to auto budget allocation, DV360 would feed more budget to the line item where the CPA is lower and slow the budget for high CPA lines.
- For this option to work better, you must have at least more than 1 line item to allocate the budget automatically.
- You must set CPA as a KPI at the IO level.
13. DV360 campaign targeting exclusions: To Optimize DV360 Campaign for CPA you must also block expensive inventory. How to find the expensive inventory, for this you need to download a report containing placement URLs, device targeting, browsers, OS report, region report, and look for targeting where the CPA’s are higher than your booked CPA. Do not block all at once; look for those where conversion is very low, and CPA is very high. See if you can block some of them. Do not block everything with low conversion and high CPA. If you block many, the pacing would take a hit, and then it would also drive up your CPM since low inventory would increase the competition.
Bonus tips:
A/B Test: Don’t miss the underrated feature on DV360, check what’s working and what’s not working for your Campaign by running an A/B test and brand lift. This would give you an idea where to pump more budget and get maximum results.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- What is the pre-launch checklist for DV360 CPA optimization? Before kicking off CPA optimization on DV360, your campaign needs a solid foundation, including bulletproof tracking with active Floodlight tags, historical conversion data, and a flight duration of at least 15 days.
- How does Maximize Conversion bidding work? This bidding strategy tells the algorithm to get as many conversions as possible without worrying about cost.
- What is Optimized targeting in DV360? It works by finding more audience outside of your seed audience who are most likely to convert using conversion signals from your campaign to improve the likelihood of your conversion.
- Why is the 15-day rule important? The 15-day rule is important because the DV360 algorithm needs time to crunch the numbers, learn from user behavior, and optimize for those high-value actions.
- How does Auto budget allocation help with CPA? When you switch to auto budget allocation, DV360 feeds more budget to the line item where the CPA is lower and slows the budget for high CPA lines.