Best practices for custom goals
Custom goals define the success events that an advertiser requires to meet its business objectives. Each package that uses the optimization goal “Highest Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)” or “Lowest Cost per Acquisition (CPA)” must include a custom goal to help achieve the overall optimization goal. You can create custom goals as custom objectives.
Each custom goal (objective) consists of one or more conversion metrics to be tracked and optimized, and the relative weights of those metrics. You can assign a custom goal to a package for reporting and algorithmic optimization using Adobe AI.
To create and manage custom goals, see “Manage custom objectives.”
Custom goals with a single metric
The following examples show how you might configure goals that target a single conversion metric.
Example for a campaign with the “Highest Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)” optimization goal
If your campaign goal is revenue (Highest Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)), and revenue from all device types is equally important to you, then include the “Revenue” metric with a weight of one (1). Select the metric type Goal.
Example for a campaign with the “Lowest Cost per Acquisition (CPA)” optimization goal
If your campaign goal is the lowest cost per acquisition (CPA) and it requires only one success event (such as “Application Submit”), then include that one metric and specify the metric type as Goal. The best practice is to set the weight as one (1).
Custom goals with multiple metrics
There are two scenarios in which you would use multiple metrics in a custom goal:
- Your campaign goal has multiple success events. For example, maybe you’re advertising for more than one on-site action (PDF Download, Contact Us, and Email Sign up), and all are actions contribute to your CPA goal. If the objective includes the three separate metrics, each with weights of one (1), then the Adobe AI-powered algorithm treats each of the metrics and user device types with equal importance. If the different metrics have varying costs or importance, then adjust their relative weights accordingly.
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The single conversion metric in your custom goal isn’t achieving the minimum of 10 conversions per day required for optimized performance. Lower numbers of conversions can occur because of minimal daily package spend or a limited number of natural conversions. Adding additional supporting metrics to the custom goal can help you achieve the 10-conversions-per-day threshold. Ten supporting events can help a package meet the 10/day threshold, even when each of their weights is below one (1). But you may not need to add that many events.
When you add supporting metrics to a custom goal, weight them according to their relative importance to the main success event, and keep in mind the quantity of data points. This allows the Adobe AI-powered algorithm to balance multiple metrics and optimize toward your goal.
The following example objective includes three metrics, each with a different weight: Application Submit = 1, Application Start = 0.1, and Advertiser Landing Page = 0.01. This means that each Application Submit conversion has the same value to your business as an average of 10 Application Start conversions and 100 Advertiser Landing Page conversions.
If, instead, you weighted Landing Page visits equally to Application Submits, then the naturally higher quantity of landing page visits could overwhelm your goal and skew optimization toward landing page visits.