Web Contact Targeting Campaign Guide

 

What are Contact Targeting Campaigns for Web

A Contact Targeting Campaign is a specifically designed advertising strategy that allows you to reach a Contact List by serving ads across the web and social platforms with a specific end goal in mind, for example, brand awareness. 

To launch a Contact Targeting Campaign, you will need to import a Contact List to AdRoll ABM, which will be comprised of a list of email addresses for the people that you are looking to reach. Contact Lists can be created natively in AdRoll ABM, imported through our CRM/MAP Integrations, or manually through a CSV file. Click here to see all the available sources and instructions to add a Contact List to AdRoll ABM.

 

Who can access

Access to Contact Targeting Campaigns depends on your AdRoll ABM package:

Your Package	Contact Targeting Campaigns
Account Based Advertising	Included
Account Based Marketing + Advertising	Included
Account Based Marketing	Included
Starter (Legacy)	Included
Standard (Legacy)	Included
Professional (Legacy)	Included
Ultimate (Legacy)	Included
Free Tier	Included

 

Step 1. Essentials before you start

• Install the Pixel to track visitors.
• Create at least one conversion audience. We recommend creating one conversion audience for each single form submission on your website.
• Create at least one set of web ads.
• Your Contact List must have at least 100 unique emails that match a cookie. However, we recommend at least 1,000 unique emails for better performance, as smaller lists may lead to suboptimal reach and ad effectiveness. Learn more about Contact Lists here.
• For best results, spend $0.10 to $0.20 per contact match each month.
• If a contact from your targeted audience visits your site and converts (e.g., fills out a lead form), AdRoll ABM will continue to target them by default. It's advisable to manually exclude these conversion audiences from your Website Retargeting Campaigns by marking them as ‘Exclusions’. For guidance, check this help center article.

 

Step 2: Create a Contact Targeting Campaign

• Click here or go to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks.
• Click Create and select Ad Campaigns in the dropdown.

• Select Contact Targeting as your Campaign Goal and Click Next.

 

Step 3. Configure your Web Campaign Settings

In this step, you will configure the settings that will be applied to your campaign, including when it will run, how you would like us to prioritize your bid strategy, advanced bidding options, and placement exclusions.

 

Campaign Name

Click Edit Name at the top of your campaign and choose a name that will be easy to identify across reports and AdRoll ABM features. We recommend following a consistent naming convention for all your campaigns.

 

Campaign Channel

Scroll down to the section called Channel to select the channel where you wish to run your ads:

• Web: Your ads will be served on the Web (Desktop and Mobile) and Apps.
• Connected TV: Your CTV video ads will be delivered through streaming apps, either built into smart TVs or through devices like Roku, Apple TV, and gaming consoles connected to a TV.

If you want to run the same campaign both in Web and CTV, you will need to launch two separate campaigns, one for each channel.

Please note that this article will guide you through launching a Web Channel campaign.

Campaign Schedule

Scroll down to the section called Choose your Schedule. The schedule you select will be applied to all AdGroups within your campaign, unless you set up Custom Schedules for specific AdGroups.

• Specify your Start Date:
  • Here you can specify if you want to launch your campaign immediately or on a specific date.
  • Please note that all campaigns will go through a 48-hour review period before they are approved and go live.
• Specify your End Date:
  • For evergreen campaigns, select No end date.
  • For time-bound campaigns, set up a specific end date.

Please note that all dates and times you set are expressed in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), this default time zone cannot be changed.

Default Start and End Dates	Specific Start and End Dates

 

Web Bidding Settings

Scroll down to the section called Web Channel.

Here you will be able to choose how your campaign optimizes its Bid Strategy by adjusting the algorithm to prioritize conversions, clicks, or conversions. This section also offers you advanced bidding settings to control Day Parting, Frequency Capping, and Exclusions. 

Choose one of the three options under Bid Strategy:

• Conversions: Focus on those most likely to convert as defined in your Conversion Audiences.
• Clicks: Enhance traffic by maximizing clicks.
• Impressions: Boost the number of ads displayed by your campaign.

Leaving the Target CPM, CPC, and CPA values blank will let us automatically maximize impressions, clicks or conversions within your budget. If you set a specific CPM, CPC, or CPA, BidIQ will optimize to reach your target; however, the actual CPM, CPC, or CPA may vary.

If you need help choosing a Bid Strategy, read this article. Please note that bid strategy options differ by channel.

 

Advanced Options: Day Parting

Adjusting this advanced setting is not recommended. If you want to limit specific days of the week and times to serve ads, read this article for more information.

Day parting is automatically adjusted by BidIQ®, our proprietary real-time bidding algorithm processing hundreds of variables for each and every user, to determine whether or not to bid, and how much, at the time of each potential impression.

 

Advanced Options: Frequency Capping

Adjusting this advanced setting is not recommended. If you want to limit the number of impressions per user per day, read this article for more information.

Frequency capping is dynamically adjusted by BidIQ®, our proprietary real-time bidding algorithm processing hundreds of variables for each and every user, to optimise how many times your ads appear to the same person.

 

Advanced Options: General Exclusions 

To find Campaign-specific exclusions, scroll down to the section Choose Web Settings and click Advanced Options.

Check this box to choose whether to target your existing customers in this campaign, as defined in your account General Exclusion Settings.

Please note that we will automatically exclude competitors and coworkers from your campaigns.

To make changes to your existing account General Exclusions, exit your campaign and navigate to Settings > General Exclusions and follow the instructions in this article.

 

Advanced Options: Campaign-specific Exclusions

To find Campaign-specific exclusions, scroll down to the section Choose Web Settings and click Advanced Options.

Web Campaign-specific exclusions allow you to configure Domain and App exclusions at the campaign level to control the placements where your ads are served. Campaign-specific exclusions are applied in addition to your existing General Exclusions.

Learn more about Campaign-specific exclusions in this article.

 

Step 4. Configure your AdGroup Settings

An AdGroup is a fundamental organizational unit within a campaign. Creating multiple AdGroups within one campaign lets you select specific ads for a specific audience, environments, locations, and custom schedules.

• At a minimum, a campaign will have one AdGroup; you can add more as needed.
• You can measure performance for each individual AdGroup.
• Your Campaign budget is automatically allocated across all the AdGroups in your campaign; you can't set specific budget allocations by AdGroup.

 

AdGroup Name

Choose a naming convention that is easy to recognize in AdRoll ABM reports and dashboards.

 

AdGroup Schedule

If you want this AdGroup to run on a different schedule than your main campaign schedule, toggle on Use Custom AdGroup Schedule and select your start and end dates.

 

AdGroup Audience Included

Choose the Contact List you want to target. If you haven't created your Contact Audiences, follow the instructions in our Contact Lists introduction guide.

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different audiences with different ads.

 

AdGroup Audience Excluded

If a user in your target audience completes a conversion on your site, we will keep serving them ads. To avoid this, you must manually exclude all conversion audiences from your campaign. Read this article to learn how to exclude audiences from campaigns.

Scroll down to Configure AdGroup > Audience > Exclude and click Choose.

• Filter by Conversion Audiences only and select them all, then click Choose. Conversion audience names include a dollar sign $ prefix for easy identification.

 

AdGroup Audience Location

By default, our AI-powered BidIQ algorithm will choose the best locations for you to optimize campaign performance based on where the users in your target audience are. We recommend using the automatically targeting the best locations to cover 100% of users in your audience, regardless of where they are located at the moment. This is especially crucial in today's remote work environment.

Adjusting geo-targeting limits the locations of users seeing your ads. If you want to select specific audience locations, read this article to learn more.

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different user locations with different ads.

 

Target/Exclude by Keywords

Your ads are displayed on websites and apps that align with the content you've specified through targeted keywords, ensuring they appear in contexts that are relevant to your audience and complement your brand message.

Target keywords to ensure your ads appear next to relevant content, and exclude keywords to avoid placements that don’t align with your brand. AdRoll Contextual Keywords support multilingual targeting. English keywords automatically trigger translations in 53 other languages. For more details, see Contextual Keyword Targeting.

 

Environments

By default, we will automatically serve ads to your audience users in Desktop, Mobile Web, and Mobile Apps. We recommend using the Automatic Environments default setting to cover 100% of users in your audience, regardless of the type of environment they are.

While not advised, you can exclude Desktop, Mobile Web, and Mobile App by turning off each specific Environment. Learn more about how to exclude Environments here. 

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different environments with different ads.

AdGroup creatives

Scroll down to Web Ads section to upload ads to the campaign. At a minimum, select the following ad types and sizes:

• Image Web Ads: 160x600, 300x250, 300x600, 320x50, 728x90, 970x250, 600x500, 600x315
• Native Web Ads: 600x600, 600x315, 600x500

You can create additional AdGroups with different ad creative variations to let BidIQ optimize towards the best-performing ads automatically.

Create more AdGroups if needed

Add additional AdGroups to your campaign as needed by clicking New AdGroup and repeating the prior steps to define: AdGroup Name, Custom Schedule, Audience Inclusions/Exclusions, Environments, Location, and Ad sets.

 

Step 5. Choose your Campaign Budget

You have the option to select between Daily Budget and Monthly Budget.

The Monthly budget can be prorated (based on the number of days left in the month) or you can use the entire monthly budget for the number of days remaining in the month. Your budget settings apply to all AdGroups. 

Read this article for tips on selecting your campaign budget.

 

Step 6. Finish later or launch

Once you have completed all the steps in this guide, you can:

• Click Finish Later to save a draft. This allows you to save your work in progress and return later to finalize and submit for launch.
• Click Submit if you are ready to confirm the campaign should launch on the Start Date. Launch date is subject to our ~48-hour ad policy review period. 

 

Campaign Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing issues after launching your campaign, find tips to troubleshoot your campaign in this article.

 

FAQ

Why am I spending more on 'Unknown' than 'Known' contacts?

'Unknown Total' includes all the cookies that we haven't yet been able to match with a certain domain. In case we are not able to deanonymize those with our database and our partner networks, we may need to wait for the contact to actually visit the website, so we can finalize deanonymization with our pixel.

Those values are fluid, and usually at the beginning your campaign may show a higher number of 'Unknown Total', and with the flow of the campaign, the amount should go down in favor of 'Known Total'.

In this step, you will configure the settings that will be applied to your campaign, including when it will run, how you would like us to prioritize your bid strategy, advanced bidding options, and placement exclusions.