At a glance: Bid Automation is an operation efficiency feature to execute recurring bids based on UA performance thresholds.
Cost Center's Bid Automation feature provides support for bid adjustments to ad networks using customisable formulas. These formulas can be executed as one-time actions or configured to run automatically at specified intervals, such as daily, to streamline the bidding process.
Supported Ad Networks:
Bid by Campaign: Google Ads
Bid by Country: Unity, IronSource, Mintegral, Applovin
Bid by Site ID: Unity, IronSource, Mintegral, Applovin
Execute Bidding Rules
Create rules using "If" and "Then" bid logic to optimise bids based on UA performance.
1. Go to Your App > "Bid Automation"
2. Select the "Date Range" of data for bid calculation.
Cost Center only calculates Dx metrics on dates that have enough data.
For example, if today is 10/6 and you’re using LTV D1 in the conditions, only users installed the app from 8/6 or earlier will be used to calculate LTV D1. The users who installed after 8/6 don’t have enough data for D1 yet so they will be excluded.
3. Click on "+ Add Action"
4. Choose your desire metric and set the performance threshold for bid targeting.
Example: If "Ad Network Installs" is more than 1,000
5. Then, add in the bid calculation rule.
Example: Then "eCPI" to decrease by USD0.02.
This formula will calculate the new bids based on current bids or calculated metrics from the selected date range
Refer to more sample rules below.
6. Set your Daily or Total Bid Budget based on the desired metric.
Supported Ad Networks for "Total Budget" configuration: Mintegral, Unity
Supported Ad Networks for "Daily Budget" configuration: Mintegral, Unity, AppLovin, Google (only for Campaign level).
Note
Setting of Daily or Total Bid Budget is only applicable on Campaign and Country level.
7. Once you have the rule logic, you can select where this rule gets to be applied. You can choose to execute this rule across ad networks, apps, and/or countries.
Choose to remove certain countries if you would like to exclude them from this bid logic.
8. Set your rule to bid by Campaign, Country or Site ID level based on your UA strategy.
9. Now, click on "Calculate New Bids" to generate the potential bid adjustments.
New bids are calculated based on the setup formula which will be displayed in the table below. When you hover on each new bids, you will see the condition applied to calculate it.
10. Click on "Review New Bids" to view the new bids. Click "Submit" to execute the bidding logic.
After the new bids are calculated, you can review and submit them directly to the respective ad networks. Activity logs will be created in "History" tab when bids are submitted.
Manual Bid Adjustment
Manually fine-tune the automatically calculated bids in "Review" by editing the individual bids.
Click on the edit icon.
Enter your preferred bid. Click on ✓ icon to save your bid.
After you are done with the manual adjustments, click on "Submit" to send all new bids to the ad network(s).
Set Recurring Bids
Automate the bid logic on a recurring schedule to reduce manual work for bid adjustments.
1. Enable "Automation" in your Bid Automation setup. Click on the "Edit" icon.
2. Choose a "Start Date" for this rule
3. Define the frequency of your recurring bid schedule. You can set it for a set interval occurance (E.g. Every 2 days) or based on specific day of the week (E.g. Every Mondays and Fridays).
3. Close this modal and "save" your rule to execute this repeatedly.
Limit Your Bids
Prevent over spending by putting a cap on your max bids when setting up bid automation.
1. Enable "Automation" in your Bid Automation setup. Click on the "Edit" icon.
2. Input the max bid value for this bid logic.
3. "Calculate" and "save" this rule for future use.
Sandbox Testing
Test your rule configuration by using "Sandbox" version before enabling it for production.
1. Enable "Automation" in your Bid Automation setup. Click on the "Edit" icon.
2. Turn on "Sandbox" and enable "Notification".
Select the preferred channel to receive the notification: Slack or email.
You will receive alerts on the pseudo bid submissions for monitoring before going live with your bid strategies.
Once you are comfortable with your strategy, disable "Sandbox" to execute the rules on production. Cost Center will then submit the bids directly to the respective ad networks.
Sample Rules
1. If the Ad Network Installs is more than 100, set new bid is 110% of current bid (increase current bid by 10%)
2. If the Ad Network Installs is more than 100 and ROAS D3 is less than 50%, set new bid is 90% of current bid (decrease current bid by 10%)
3. For Unity tROAS campaign: if Cost is less than $20, set max bid is 2x LTV D3 and goal is equal to ROAS D7
4. For Google tROAS campaign: if ROAS D3 is more than 100%, set goal is 2x ROAS D3
Important
Bid Automation can lead to overspending if the formulas are set up incorrectly. We strongly recommend all studios to adhere to the following steps for extra precaution:
Setup Insight Settings in Cost Center to send alerts if spending of any Campaign / Country is over 100% of the last period
Always run the formulas to calculate bids and submit manually before setting up automation
Always test bid automation by enabling sandbox
Always set max bid for bid automation
Bulk Upload Bid Logic
Create your bid logic in a .csv file and upload directly by "Import formula" within Bid Automation.
A template file "template.csv" is available for download for you to create multiple bid logic at one go.
For country based filter, please use ISO two-letter country code (alpha-2) for your input. Here is a sample file with rule logic for your reference.