In this article, we will go over some of the specific Taboola capabilities and tools you should definitely know about. This way you will be able to better adapt and make sure you get the most out of it.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Headlines
When it comes to creating high ctr, engaging ads with appealing headlines, dynamic keyword insertion is one of those capabilities you’d want to always use. By doing so you will be able to serve personalized headlines that most likely will trigger viewer’s curiosity to click on your ads. Here’s an example:
Instead of saying: Home Owners Can Now Get Paid to Install Solar Panels
Say: Home Owners in Texas Can Now Get Paid to Install Solar Panels
Adding the region name in the headline will most likely make viewers feel that the headline is relevant to their region and as a result trigger their curiosity to know more about the subject.
Here are some of the dynamic keyword insertion macros you can use for your headlines.
${country:capitalized}$ – returns the country name the user is browsing from, first letter capitalized.
${region:capitalized}$ – returns the region name the user is browsing from, first letter capitalized.
${dma:capitalized}$ – returns the DMA (designated market area) the user is browsing from, first letter capitalized.
${city:capitalized}$ – returns the city name the user is browsing from, first letter capitalized
${platform:capitalized}$ – returns the user device, first letter capitalized.
${dayofweek:capitalized}$ – returns the current day of the week, first letter capitalized.
To have the above-listed keyword insertions served in ALL CAPS letters, simply replace capitalized with uppercase. Example: ${region:uppercase}$
Important note: Make sure your type macro values using lowercase only letters, doing otherwise will prevent the ad from going live on Taboola’s inventory network.
Click here for more details on using Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Taboola.
Headline Analyzer Tool
Before even submitting your ads for approval you have the possibility to get an estimation about your ad headline performance, with the aim to find out who will yield a better CTR for your campaigns.
The process is pretty simple, all you have to do is submit two or more ads for analysis and the tool will automatically reorder headlines. The best performing headlines will move to the top of the list, while the less performing ones to the bottom of the list.
Check out the results from the headline we used in the previous example of this article.
Click here to start analyzing your ad headlines for free.
Discover Changing Image & Video Trends
When running native advertising campaigns, we really get the true meaning of “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Taboola does a pretty great job of updating its users with the latest trends, so if you are looking for some inspiration when it comes to choosing what images to use for your ads, TaboolaTrends is the right go-to tool.
You can filter image results by category, platform, language, and even country. This way you can get the latest inspiration results specific to your campaign’s targeting. Last but not least, the cool thing is that it shows side-by-side image variations with additional details on their differences and performance results.
Click here to discover the latest image trends for your campaigns.
Now let’s dive into some more interesting details, you definitely want to keep present when running campaigns with Taboola.
Marketing Objectives
This is one of the best additions you can have when running paid traffic campaigns on huge inventory networks like Taboola. Knowing that your ads will be served on thousands of sites, it may easily end up being a pretty expensive process when you cannot specify the marketing objective of your campaigns.
Thankfully Taboola offers the ability to specify up to 5 main marketing objective goals.
- Lead Generation
- Online Purchases
- Website Engagement
- Brand Awareness
- Mobile App Installs
If you think that the above is not enough, I believe you’d better think twice. After all most of the online advertising campaigns nowadays have online purchases, lead generation, or mobile app installs as their main objective. So, no matter what you are promoting, your main campaign goal will fall under one of these marketing objective categories.
Creative traffic allocation
Whenever you are creating a new campaign on Taboola, you will most likely have the creative traffic allocation selected to Optimized by default. A setting many people tend to skip but in many cases quite useful to be changed when testing new campaigns.
Here’s the thing…
When running campaigns using “Optimized” creative traffic allocation, Taboola’s algorithm will decide on its own which ad creative to choose and use as the main ad that drives traffic to your campaign.
An interesting functionality for when you’re not sure which ads to pause and which ones to keep running when optimizing your campaigns. But a little risky when you want to properly split-test headlines. This because, in most of the cases, Taboola’s algorithm will pick the winning ad within the first few days, and focus like 90% of the traffic on it, giving little chances to the other ads to show their potential.
Alternatively, you can choose “Even” creative traffic allocation for your campaigns and decide for yourself which ads to pause and which ads to kill. But to do this, make sure you’re waking up the hidden nerd inside of you and make data-driven decisions when calling out the shots for pausing ads.
It’s worth noting that when running campaigns with “Even” creative traffic allocation, you will need higher testing budgets to properly test a new campaign (after all you will have more ads to test). Besides that, in some cases when the campaign has been running for a while and one of the ads tends to show a better CTR and higher number of conversions, Taboola’s algorithm will try to prioritize that specific ad.
Bidding Strategy: SmartBid or FixedBid?
Taboola offers two main bidding strategies for when running advertising campaigns on their network – SmartBid and FixedBid. And as a matter of fact, the bidding strategy has become subject to one of the most frequent questions when talking about optimization and automatic rules with our users.
But if we were to ask all our Taboola users which is your preferred bidding strategy on Taboola, we will hardly find a winner between the two. The simple reason is that, there are no right or wrong ones – most likely we can categorize them as Standard and Advanced ones. When it comes to real-world usage, you can even use both of them at the same time. But let’s get over some of the details.
SmartBid Bidding Strategy
When using SmartBid, you are practically passing the ball to Taboola when it comes to fighting for the best optimal bid to get your campaign conversions. Depending on your marketing objectives, Taboola will likely be aware of what sites your product needs to be advertised to, and what bit levels will get you conversions for the lowest possible cost. At the same time, it will take into consideration even the competition level on a publisher site level. Meaning that, if a publisher site has little to no competition Taboola will automatically place a lower bid than the one that you have set on the campaign level. And when the competition is high, it will try to stay to the maximum bid you have set, but sometimes even bid above your limit trying to get those sweet conversions.
According to their documentation when running on SmartBid, Taboola will automatically play within the ranges of -50% to +200% of your campaign level bid, when bidding on publisher sites.
FixedBid Bidding Strategy
This is kind of a more advanced bidding strategy, and quite honestly, it’s not suitable for everyone – especially if you’re just getting started with advertising Taboola. If you decide to start a campaign with FixedBid, you will most likely end up paying a higher price on low competition sites, and get served last, if not at all on highly competitive publisher sites.
On the other hand, this option gives you the ability to have more control over your bids and avoid bidding double your Avg. CPC on specific sites without conversions, but that’s also something you will likely end up testing for yourself. By the end of the day, you can increase the bid as high as you can, as long as a publisher site is profitable.
Mixed Bidding Strategy (using both SmartBid and FixedBid)
This one is my favorite strategy for a simple reason. Although when starting a campaign, you choose SmartBid as your preferred bidding strategy, you can always switch the bidding strategy from SmartBid to FixedBid on specific publisher sites.
By doing so, you get both the candy and ice cream in one hand. You leave the bidding testing process to Taboola for when the campaign is starting out, and when you collect enough conversions, you can switch the bidding strategy to FixedBid on top-performing publisher sites, to gain more control of your bids.
In both cases, when using either SmartBid or FixedBid, you can always set publisher site bids to a different CPC value from one of the campaign bids.
Just keep in mind that in both cases a change limit of -99% up to +200% from the campaign level bid applies.
