Use Native Bid Adjustments to Control Campaign Performance

Yahoo Native Bid Adjustments is a new feature extension to the Yahoo Native family that provides advertisers with greater control over their campaign performance. Native advertisers can now adjust bids by both supply and device.

Using native bid adjustments, you can modify positive and negative bid thresholds, enabling you to better control supply, as well as influence platform performance.


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The initial Version 1.0 lets you influence supply while Version 2.0 will provide support for influence on native bids for platform, with additional fields specified, as shown below.


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Native Bid Adjustments currently provide support only for Visit my website, Know my brand and Promote my products campaign objectives.


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Important

Native Bid Adjustments is an evolving product on the Yahoo Native. Bid thresholds may change over time. As such, the native network publisher option in each group will evolve and some device bidding features may be rolled back.

Key Benefits

  1. Advanced, more efficient campaign control to support brand and direct-response advertisers who wish to manually optimize supply and device placement for their campaign objectives.

  2. Ideal for advertisers who want mobile and third-party supply – but need to pay the right price for that inventory.

  3. For third-party publishers in Group 1 – those with high-quality inventory – expect a revenue increase.

Note

For publishers in Groups 2 and 3, you may experience a short-term revenue decrease, but this will even out over time, as more demand flows into Native and as Native removes device and supply exceptions. For all publishers, prices will stabilize over time.

How It Works

For Version 1.0, Groups 1, 2 and 3 provide you with these bid modifier thresholds:

  • G1: +400%

  • G2: +400% to -40%

  • G3: +400% to -60%


Group 1 is Native’s best-performing placements, including all Verizon Media O&O. Groups 2 & 3 are third-party publisher placements that have traditionally not offered the same level of performance as Group 1. An individual publisher’s sections fall into all three Groups.

For example:

  • If you have a CPC bid of $1.00, and you set the G1 modifier to 100%, the effective bid is $2.00.

  • If you have a CPC bid of $1.00, and you set the G2 modifier to -10%, the effective bid is $0.90.

  • If you have a CPC bid of $1.00, and you set the G3 modifier to -25%, the effective bid is $0.75.

In Version 2.0 for Groups 1, 2 and 3, you can use 6 new bid modifier fields to fine-tune your campaign performance by utilizing bid adjustments for influence on platform.

  • a desktop and tablet

  • b mobile

The following are bid modifier thresholds for Version 2.0:

  • Group 1a: +800%

  • Group 1b: +600% to -40%

  • Group 2a: +800% to -30%

  • Group 2b: +600% to -70%

  • Group 3a: +800% to -50%

  • Group 3b: +600% to -80%

Note

The UI increase to +400% is in effect +500% (i.e. $1.00 bid; +400% = $5.00).

In Version 2.0 modifiers, you have two options for each group. For example, G1a can have one value and a different modifier amount for G1b.

If you only set modifiers in Version 1.0, the system will apply the modifiers from G1/G2/G3 to each Version 2.0 option in the backend.

Some examples:

Bid Adjustments - Version 1.0 only

Current Settings: - G1: +200% - G2: -30% - G3: -50%

New Inherited Settings for Version 2.0 B:

  • G1: +200% = G1a: +200%; G1b: +200%

  • G2: -30% = G2a: -30%; G2b: -30%

  • G3: - 50% = G3a -50%; G3b: -50%

Bid Adjustments to influence both Version 1.0 + Version 2.0:

New Settings (only Version 1.0 section):

  • G1a: +200%

  • G1b: -10%

  • G2a: +75%

  • G2b: -30%

  • G3a: -20%

  • G3b: -50%

Best Practices (For Current Release)

Following are some best practices to consider when working with the initial Native Bid Adjustments release:

  1. First, run with minimal negative modifiers and utilize reporting to see where you can make incremental changes.

Some initial bid guidance:

  • G1a: +150%

  • G1b: +10%

  • G2a: +50%

  • G2b: -35%

  • G3a: +25%

  • G3b: -50%

  1. The Yahoo Native Team recommends that you begin with a 100% G1 bid boost, and then -20% and -40% bid decreases on G2 and G3, respectively. Optimize early and often. Average G1 boost is currently 250%. If you get an influx of G2/G3 supply, maximize the modifiers.

  2. Try lowering your native base bid and increasing your percentage increase on G1 higher to take advantage of potentially deeper discounts using the negative modifiers on G2/G3.

That is, if you have a 1.00 base bid, consider lowering to 0.75 and boosting the G1 bid up higher to maintain your bid pressure in G1, but also lowering the net bid on G2/G3 using the decrease modifiers.

How To Set Up Native Bid Adjustments

For new campaigns, follow these steps:

  1. Click Manage ads > New campaign > (Campaign objective specified) > General information.

  2. In the General information panel, click Type > Native only.


native-only-type
  1. In Define your audience section, the list of Native network partners appears, sorted into 3 groups for Publishers with options to increase bid adjustments by percentage number.

  2. Once you’ve specified the increase or decrease of your bid modifier thresholds, click Save.

Important

Be sure you have filled in all 9 fields. If you want the same modifier used for Version 1.0 and Version 2.0, just add it in for G1-G3. If you want different modifiers for each, only fill in G1a/b - G3a/b.

To edit existing campaigns or ad groups, follow the same steps described above.


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FAQs

Q: For which campaign types is the feature applicable? A: All campaigns except oCPC, AppInstall and Promote my products. Note that bid modifiers can only be entered at the campaign and ad group level. Q: Where can I set the modifiers? A: Available at the Campaign and Ad Group level (On Native Only Campaigns). Q: Why is my maximum bid higher than my base Native bid? A: In much the same way oCPC will often cause reporting to reflect a max bid that’s higher than the base native bid in the UI (and subsequently higher eCPCs than the base bid), the G1 bid boost can cause the max bid value in reporting to appear higher than the base bid, and eCPCs can exceed the base bid as well.


Important

If all 9 modifiers have values added, Version 2.0 modifiers will trump Version 1.0 modifiers.