Custom Bidding Algorithms

The Challenge

The FT offers three types of subscriptions, at varying price points. These conversions are valued differently based on their lifetime value. For example, a Premium subscription is more likely to renew the next year than a Standard subscription. The FT needed to maximise subscriptions driven by programmatic display at the lowest possible CPA. However, they also wanted to take into account the lifetime value of different conversions when it came to their bid strategy in order to increase long-term performance.

How we helped

The solution was to use the DV360 custom bidding beta. With the three types of conversion assigned a different value, DV360 automatically built out a bespoke weighted-conversion algorithm that optimises bids to achieve the highest return on investment. This ensures optimised performance without a complex campaign structure.

The test ran from March 6 to June 5 2020. Using the custom bidding strategy not only led to more conversions (+25%) at a lower CPA (-20%), but the share of higher value subscriptions compared to customers that just signed up to a trial, the lowest value conversion, almost doubled. This shows that not only did the bid strategy drive greater conversion volume more efficiently, it also favoured conversions of higher value to the FT.