Working with Sources and Targets
Learn about all the things that you can do with sources and targets in Zeropark: view, pause, set custom bids manually or in bulk, or filter targets by source.
Source data allows advertisers to measure their campaign performance on a broader level than target data. Every source is composed of multiple targets: some sources have just one, others have millions. To track a campaign by the source, use the {source} token.
The Sources tab shows data for all targets that fall under that source and is available in campaign details:
Table of Contents
Pausing Sources or Targets
Pausing a given source excludes all targets that fall under that source from a given campaign. Pausing a single target stops only that target. The paused targets will appear with the Excluded status.
Custom Bids per Source orTarget
The key point of any optimization is rearranging your money flow from non-profitable to profitable placements. You can set a custom bid for any source/target in your campaign.
Setting a custom bid on a given source or target will allow you to:
Receive more traffic from the source/target, if you raise the bid
Lower the price of traffic from the source/target, if you lower the bid
Hence, you have three options for source-level optimization:
If you have a great ROI on traffic from a given source, increase your bid to get more traffic.
If your ROI on traffic from a given source is marginally negative, lower the bid to pay less.
If a given placement does not perform at all, just pause it.
Modifying the Bid
In order to set a custom value for the bid, perform the following steps:
Go to the Targets/Sources tab.
Click the Auto button in the Your bid column. The cell switches to the editing mode.
Provide a custom bid for:
A target: It will override both, source and campaign bids.
A source: It will override the default campaign bid.
Setting a Custom Bid on Sources in Bulk
You can also change custom bids using a bulk action:
Note
Zeropark Note: Keep in mind that custom bids that you make at the target level will take precedence over your source bids. As a result, your custom source bids never override your custom target bids.
Use the Search by sources option.
Provide the names of sources, one source per line.
When your search results are displayed, click the Bulk actions menu and select the Edit bid option.
Provide a bid value and click the Save button.
Filtering Targets by the Source
You can check the targets which belong to the particular source by clicking the Targets button – it will take you to the list of targets with their statistics within your campaign.
Tracking for Voluum Users
All Voluum accounts registered after May 6, 2016, will have sources automatically tracked in a predefined variable, thus there is no need to add extra parameters.
If your Voluum account is registered before May 6, 2016, manually add an extra parameter to track the source either as a variable in Voluum or in your destination URL.
Note
Zeropark Note: Sources were not added automatically to the legacy Voluum accounts to avoid corrupting any historical or present data.
This feature allows you to set daily caps for spends on different types of campaigns. There are some small differences in a way this feature works in different campaign types.
Source/Target Budget Capping for Pop and Domain Traffic
Source/Target Daily Budget allows you to set a maximum daily spend cap on each Source/Target your campaign receives traffic from. Setting this up means that your campaigns will be able to run without the need for constant monitoring or without the worry about sources or targets spending too much.
The Source/Target Daily Budget feature works best for high volume RON campaigns, where you need quick optimization. You can also use it to prevent any anomalies affecting your campaign, such as spikes in traffic volume.
Note
Zeropark Info: The minimum daily source budget cap is $20 and the minimum daily target budget cap is $1.
To turn the Source Daily Budget feature on, just follow these simple steps:
In Zeropark, go to the campaign view and go to the Sources/Target daily budget section.
Select the Custom option for Targets and/or Sources.
Enter the source budget into the field. It’s just under your campaign bid and can be adjusted at any time.
Once a source in the campaign spends up to this cap, it will stop spending and enter a state called Source/Target over budget. This allows you to review the source and decide whether it should be paused or not. If you don’t take any action, the source will start to spend again the next day.
Note
Zeropark Tip: When noticed that one or a few sources/targets are profitable enough that you want to spend more than the limit you set, you can select the Disable daily budget option next to the pause button for a given source/target. This allows you to carry on spending for that source/target, even though the daily budget cap has been reached.
Source Budget Capping for Push Traffic
The Source Budget Capping feature for Push Ads works similarly to its counterpart for Pop and Domain traffic. However, due to Push Ads’ nature (a click can occur hours after an ad gets served), the source budget for Push should be treated as an estimate as it may differ from the actual spend.
To set your source budget for Push Ads campaign, simply enter the desired value in the Sources daily budget text field when creating or editing a campaign. The minimum daily budget per source is $20.
To adjust your source budget once your campaign is running, go to the campaign report screen and provide the cap value there.
You can remove the budget cap for individual sources if you don’t want to limit spending on them. Simply press the icon marked red in the screen below. Once the budget cap is taken off, the icon becomes a checkmark.
