How to Manage Your CPM Campaigns
CPM campaigns are any campaigns where you pay for a certain amount of impressions of your ad; you’re paying for your ads to appear on a page for a certain number of times.
As opposed to ads where you just post and forget them (like our Instagram ads), impressions ads give you an ongoing inventory and timeline that allows you to tweak and modify your campaign as it progresses. This means you’ll be able to maximize your campaign’s budget and learn more about your audience along the way.
While each of our CPM ad products is slightly different, the broad strokes remain the same for all of them, and can be broadly divided into three main areas: Campaign Settings, Media & Placement, and Stats.
Let’s explore each one in more detail:
Every campaign has several settings that apply to it on the account level. They are all contained under the column called “campaign” in the JCN dashboard.
In the screenshot below, you can see how much budget we have remaining on this account, as well as links to add to the budget, define when your campaign should start and stop, and target your campaign to specific geographical areas.
Other than budget, every other setting is optional, although we recommend setting an end date if you want to make sure your budget lasts for a certain amount of time.
Once you add your additional settings, they’ll all appear in that column. The next screenshot shows a campaign with beginning, end and geotargeting settings added to it. Notice how the links change from “Add” to “Edit”, allowing to modify your settings.
It’s worth noting the process of adding budget to your campaign, since it’s an action you could be doing often. Just click “add to budget” and a popup will appear. There you can define how much you want to spend and the calculator will show you how many impression your budget will be buying you:
The next page allows you to pay with a new credit card, or a saved card on file, and the impressions will then be added to your account:
Once your campaign has a budget, the question becomes, what will the ad look like, and where should it appear? This is what the Media column on the JCN dashboard is for. In the next screenshot, you can see that I’ve already defined the what – “5 ads”, and where – “on 17 sites” for this campaign.
Start by creating an ad. Click “Edit Media”, and you’ll be taken to a new page where you can add and edit your ads for that campaign. At the top left of the page, you can see which campaign’s media you’re editing. Below it will be all the media you’ve already created, if any.
On the top left is a button to add new media. When you click “Add Media”, a popup will appear when you can add the information for your ad.
This is where there might be a discrepancy between the different ad products – for example, banners ads just have an image and a link, while homepage articles might require a homepage and an excerpt as well. Here’s a list of all the types of information you might be asked to upload when creating your ad.
Image – every ad product comes with an image. Guidelines for the right dimensions and file size are displayed within the image box. You can drag and drop an image into the box, or select it from your computer.
Link – every ad needs to take people somewhere when they click. Paste in the link where you want people to be sent to when they click on the ad, whether that’s an article, your website, or a landing page.
Headline – a few of our ad types allow you to create different headlines that go along with an image. Write in a short catchy headline here and it will be displayed as part of your ad. Here’s a screenshot of what it might look like live (it would be one of the six ads):
Excerpt – some of our ads appear on the homepage of different sites. We give you the option to add a few extra lines to your ad, to make it look more authentically like a news article. Here’s what it might look like live (note the extra text below the “sponsored content” label that makes it look more convincing):
Once you’ve created your media, navigate back to the main dashboard page by clicking “Campaigns” in the sidebar menu, or the breadcrumb link at the top of the page.
Some of our ads allow you to appear on multiple different websites. By clicking “Edit Placement” on the JCN dashboard, you’ll be taken to a separate page where you can decide what sites your ads should be placed on. Click the on/off switches beside each site to enable or disable an ad on that specific site.
One of the best parts of a CPM ccampaign is the detailed stats you can get regarding every part of the campaign. You can see how well your campaigns are doing overall, how each media in the campaign is doing specifically, and which site, if there are multiple, is doing best.
We measure the results of an ad campaign with three different metrics:
Impressions – how many times the ad loaded on a page
Clicks – how many times people actually clicked on the ad
CTR – Click through rate. The ratio of clicks to how many times the ad was shown. If you show two different ads the same number of times, one ad will often get more clicks than the other. It will thus have a higher CTR, or click through rate percentage than the inferior ad.
See this screenshot for an example of three different ads that all have the same number of impressions, yet different numbers of clicks and therefore, Click Through Rates.
Stats are available on the campaign level to see how well your campaigns is doing overall,
and clicking “detailed stats” will show you a daily breakdown of more details.
Stats are also available in the media page to see how well each media is doing,
And on the placement page (if relevant) to see which site is giving you the most impressions and clicks.
In both media and placement, you have the choice of turning off an underperforming ad or site, thus focusing your budget on areas that are doing best.
There you have it, you have seen how to define the campaign’s settings and media, and view stats. If you only take away two things from this article, take note of adding to a campaign’s budget and creating ads. These are the most critical actions related to your campaign.
As opposed to ads where you just post and forget them (like our Instagram ads), impressions ads give you an ongoing inventory and timeline that allows you to tweak and modify your campaign as it progresses. This means you’ll be able to maximize your campaign’s budget and learn more about your audience along the way.
While each of our CPM ad products is slightly different, the broad strokes remain the same for all of them, and can be broadly divided into three main areas: Campaign Settings, Media & Placement, and Stats.
Let’s explore each one in more detail:
Campaign Settings
Every campaign has several settings that apply to it on the account level. They are all contained under the column called “campaign” in the JCN dashboard.
In the screenshot below, you can see how much budget we have remaining on this account, as well as links to add to the budget, define when your campaign should start and stop, and target your campaign to specific geographical areas.
Other than budget, every other setting is optional, although we recommend setting an end date if you want to make sure your budget lasts for a certain amount of time.
Once you add your additional settings, they’ll all appear in that column. The next screenshot shows a campaign with beginning, end and geotargeting settings added to it. Notice how the links change from “Add” to “Edit”, allowing to modify your settings.
Add to Budget
It’s worth noting the process of adding budget to your campaign, since it’s an action you could be doing often. Just click “add to budget” and a popup will appear. There you can define how much you want to spend and the calculator will show you how many impression your budget will be buying you:
The next page allows you to pay with a new credit card, or a saved card on file, and the impressions will then be added to your account:
Media & Placement
Once your campaign has a budget, the question becomes, what will the ad look like, and where should it appear? This is what the Media column on the JCN dashboard is for. In the next screenshot, you can see that I’ve already defined the what – “5 ads”, and where – “on 17 sites” for this campaign.
Media
Start by creating an ad. Click “Edit Media”, and you’ll be taken to a new page where you can add and edit your ads for that campaign. At the top left of the page, you can see which campaign’s media you’re editing. Below it will be all the media you’ve already created, if any.
On the top left is a button to add new media. When you click “Add Media”, a popup will appear when you can add the information for your ad.
This is where there might be a discrepancy between the different ad products – for example, banners ads just have an image and a link, while homepage articles might require a homepage and an excerpt as well. Here’s a list of all the types of information you might be asked to upload when creating your ad.
Image – every ad product comes with an image. Guidelines for the right dimensions and file size are displayed within the image box. You can drag and drop an image into the box, or select it from your computer.
Link – every ad needs to take people somewhere when they click. Paste in the link where you want people to be sent to when they click on the ad, whether that’s an article, your website, or a landing page.
Headline – a few of our ad types allow you to create different headlines that go along with an image. Write in a short catchy headline here and it will be displayed as part of your ad. Here’s a screenshot of what it might look like live (it would be one of the six ads):
Excerpt – some of our ads appear on the homepage of different sites. We give you the option to add a few extra lines to your ad, to make it look more authentically like a news article. Here’s what it might look like live (note the extra text below the “sponsored content” label that makes it look more convincing):
Once you’ve created your media, navigate back to the main dashboard page by clicking “Campaigns” in the sidebar menu, or the breadcrumb link at the top of the page.
Placement
Some of our ads allow you to appear on multiple different websites. By clicking “Edit Placement” on the JCN dashboard, you’ll be taken to a separate page where you can decide what sites your ads should be placed on. Click the on/off switches beside each site to enable or disable an ad on that specific site.
Stats
One of the best parts of a CPM ccampaign is the detailed stats you can get regarding every part of the campaign. You can see how well your campaigns are doing overall, how each media in the campaign is doing specifically, and which site, if there are multiple, is doing best.
We measure the results of an ad campaign with three different metrics:
Impressions – how many times the ad loaded on a page
Clicks – how many times people actually clicked on the ad
CTR – Click through rate. The ratio of clicks to how many times the ad was shown. If you show two different ads the same number of times, one ad will often get more clicks than the other. It will thus have a higher CTR, or click through rate percentage than the inferior ad.
See this screenshot for an example of three different ads that all have the same number of impressions, yet different numbers of clicks and therefore, Click Through Rates.
Stats are available on the campaign level to see how well your campaigns is doing overall,
and clicking “detailed stats” will show you a daily breakdown of more details.
Stats are also available in the media page to see how well each media is doing,
And on the placement page (if relevant) to see which site is giving you the most impressions and clicks.
In both media and placement, you have the choice of turning off an underperforming ad or site, thus focusing your budget on areas that are doing best.
Summary
There you have it, you have seen how to define the campaign’s settings and media, and view stats. If you only take away two things from this article, take note of adding to a campaign’s budget and creating ads. These are the most critical actions related to your campaign.
Updated on: 04/16/2019
Thank you!