Who this guide is for: Small-to-medium (SMB) Brand advertisers using Realize.
For SMB Brands, moving from planning to execution means taking practical steps to launch campaigns effectively and optimize for performance:
(A) Bidding Strategy
Choosing the right bidding strategy is essential to drive performance while staying within your campaign goals.
Maximize Conversions is ideal for most advertisers, especially those focusing on performance. This strategy automatically adjusts bids to maximize conversions within your budget. For best results, set a daily budget that’s at least 10X your target CPA or $50 for CPAs under $5.
If you want better control over cost per action (CPA), set a Target CPA after achieving 50 conversions in 7 consecutive days. This may limit scale, as the algorithm will prioritize hitting the target over spending the full budget.
E.g., cutting-edge blue light-blocking wellness glasses targeting a niche audience and prioritizing profitable growth over higher lead volume.
Enhanced CPC (eCPC) is for advertisers who want more control over their CPC, Enhanced CPC lets you adjust bids according to your own knowledge, offering a balance between automated bidding and manual control.
Pro Tips:
SMB Brands should start with Maximize Conversions to see what performs best, then refine your strategy based on campaign goals.
Keep an eye on the Reach Estimator to ensure your audience isn’t too narrow.
(B) Campaign Performance Monitoring
Realize's Real-time and Scheduled reports empower you to react swiftly to performance shifts and optimize campaigns on the fly.
With Custom Reports, you have full flexibility to build reports tailored to your needs, capturing metrics like CPA, CTR, CPC, and conversion rates. This enables you to spot trends and patterns that inform your optimization strategy.
By analyzing performance data, SMB advertisers can identify underperforming elements- such as low engagement with a specific visual. These insights allows you to make data-driven adjustments to creatives, targeting, or landing pages, ultimately maximizing your campaign's ROI.
Establish clear benchmarks for pausing underperforming ads. (e.g., ads with a vCTR below 0.5% or excessively high CPCs should be paused to conserve budget for better-performing creatives). For SMB Brands, this ensures tight control over limited budgets and efficient use of spend.
Use Custom Rules to automate these decisions- such as pausing low-performing ads, blocking underperforming sites, or adjusting budget caps- based on your defined thresholds. This is especially helpful for SMB Brands with smaller teams, letting campaigns run efficiently without constant manual oversight.
(C) Campaign Optimization
Optimizing your campaigns is crucial for SMB Brands to achieving the best results. Abby, our Gen-AI performance expert, helps SMB advertisers with setup, troubleshooting, and optimization- reducing errors and guesswork. Abby currently covers many common use cases and helps flag key issues to guide campaign optimization.
In general, give campaigns at least 2 to 3 days to go through the learning phase before making changes or expecting steady results.
If campaign isn’t serving
Abby will notify you of issues and opportunities. Abby flags potential problems- like creative mismatches, budget limits, or targeting errors- and provides step-by-step guidance to help improve campaign performance. Common reasons why ads might not serve include:
Over-Targeting: Too many targeting parameters can severely limit your reach. Use the Reach Estimator to ensure your audience size is sufficient. Consider broadening your targeting with run-of-network options.
E.g., For new campaigns, start with broad targeting to allow the algorithm to gather learnings. For example, instead of restricting your organic vitamin campaign to only ‘urban yoga moms aged 25-30,’ run it broadly for the first week to capture a larger relevant audience.
Low Bids: A bid that’s too low can prevent your ads from winning auctions. Start with the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy to let the algorithm optimize for purchases. Avoid manual bid adjustments during the first week to give the algorithm time to learn and stabilize performance.
Creative Issues: Content violations can block delivery. Abby highlights these issues so you can easily revise the copy.
E.g., An ad for a detox tea might trigger policy flags if it includes exaggerated health claims
Financial Issues: Campaigns won’t serve if your account has no active credit card, insufficient funds, or is frozen. Abby will also alert you if your campaign budget is depleted, especially with lifetime or monthly caps.
Blocks: Components like keywords, branding text, or URLs may be restricted by major publishers, or your campaign/account may be actively blocking certain publishers or traffic sources.
If Your Campaign Is Spending but Not Converting
Verify Pixel Setup: Use the Tracking Test Tool to ensure your tracking data is being sent accurately to Realize. This helps confirm that the signals used by our algorithms are trustworthy and set up correctly.
Adjust Optimization Goals: If conversions are low, SMB Brands can switch their optimization to focus on events higher in the marketing funnel to collect more data.
E.g., If you're promoting a premium vitamin subscription, start by optimizing for “add-to-cart” or “trial sign-up” instead of “completed subscription purchase”
Once you’ve gathered enough volume, shift back to your primary goal (e.g., “completed purchase” or “first subscription payment”). Be aware that the algorithm will re-enter a learning phase after the switch, and short-term performance changes are expected.
If CPA is too high:
For Maximize Conversions, ensure your daily budget is sufficient. Wait until the algorithm has gathered enough data (e.g., 50 conversions over 7 consecutive days) before setting a Target CPA. Avoid setting a CPA goal early to let the algorithm optimize.
In the early stages of a campaign, CPA can naturally fluctuate, and most sites may not have had enough time to convert. Hold off on making big changes too soon. If you notice a site has spent around 2.5-3× your CPA goal without generating any conversions, it may be worth excluding it to improve efficiency.
Adjust your ads to increase click-through rates- try experimenting with motion ads, dynamic keyword insertion (DKI), CTA buttons, or creative approaches like urgency (FOMO) and discounts to improve overall campaign efficiency.
You could also consider broadening your audience if your original targeting is very narrow
E.g., If you're promoting a gut health supplement and currently targeting only digestive health keywords, try expanding to include users interested in overall wellness or clean eating.
Use the Reach Estimator to confirm your audience isn’t too limited.
If you’re not satisfied with the sites on which your ads are serving:
Use brand safety and verification tools (e.g., IAS, DoubleVerify) to avoid low-quality or irrelevant placements.
Create a blocklist for sites that don’t align with your brand.
Apply Custom Rules to block underperforming sites.
In addition to these controls, SpendGuard automatically protects your budget by capping or blocking sites that drive poor performance- based on CPA and CVR tracked in Realize. It activates once your campaign reaches 5 conversions, 200 clicks, and 100 clicks on a specific site. You can view SpendGuard’s actions in the Site Report. It runs by default and requires no setup, so we recommend keeping it enabled.
Conclusion
For small-to-medium brands, executing campaigns with careful monitoring, bid management, and real-time optimization ensures budgets drive results, creatives and targeting improve quickly, and early performance data informs smarter decisions. With these steps, SMB Brands can maximize ROI, reduce wasted spend, and lay the foundation for scalable growth.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your Account Manager, email us at support@taboola.com, or reach out via chat within Realize.