What is Target CPA? Quick Guide to Highly Scalable Campaigns

Welcome to the wonderfully automated world of Target CPA Bidding – an ingenious way to optimize your campaigns’ performance, while maximizing your conversions at a lower cost per acquisition (CPA).

This game-changing smart bidding technology has seen a meteoric adoption rate as of late, and it’s not surprising in the least.

When run effectively, CPA Target has the infinite potential to automate manual bidding for good.

CPA Target Bidding is a must for B2B businesses and online advertisers running multiple campaigns at the same time.

By running variables and past campaign data in real-time, this advanced machine learning algorithm automatically streamlines your onsite bidding process, meaning you’re able to achieve your campaign goals, either equal to or much lower than the original target.

Maximize Conversion with CPA Target

So, what exactly is CPA Target about and why is it so different from manual optimization? Stick around as we conduct a quick Adcash crash course into CPA Target Bidding. We’ll cover steps needed to set up bidding on your own advertiser platform, as well as run you through 2022’s global adoption rates. We’ll even unpack a recent success case, where a well-known VPN network was able to bring in a consistently higher ROAS on Tier 1 Geos while staying 80% below target (Month-over-Month).

What is Target CPA?

CPA Target Bidding (also known as target cost per acquisition CPA bidding) is a bidding strategy that automatically optimizes your campaign’s performance and maximizes your conversions in the process.

It does this by optimizing your bids to either match or come in lower than the CPA Target you initially set. More often than not it comes in lower.

By leveraging machine learning and smart bidding technology, CPA Target is able to identify the best traffic segments as well as the best bid for each impression.

It does this by analyzing your campaign’s historical data while comparing it to live auctions to find the ideal traffic match for your bid.

The Future of Automated Bidding

The world’s most reputable Ad Networks have already developed their own in-house bidding technology.

Ad Networks have their own advanced machine learning algorithms on hand to identify the best segments for your campaign and bid for the best returns

And, while Google Ads pioneered Target CPA, their setup, segmentation, and reporting can be a little tricky if you’re new to online advertising. It pays to do your research. Try out Google Ads, or other leading advertising networks in conjunction with one another and see where you get the best results.

Make sure you’re always able to target effectively, closely monitor your spending and track your results at all times.

A Quick Word on Adcash Target CPA

Combining 14 years’ ad tech experience, advanced campaign optimization/machine learning, and some of the brightest minds in the biz, Adcash gives you your own epic Advertiser dashboard, complete with CPA Target bidding and an exclusive network of publishers.

Reach out to them anytime right here, and start targeting the strongest global traffic.

To learn more about Adcash’s platform, read Mobidea Academy’s Adcash review.

Conversions and Adoption Rates

CPA Target brings in around 2.2 million monthly conversions.

Check out the below adoption rates for the latter half of 2021.

Image courtesy of Adcash

How To Set Up Target CPA

It goes without saying that target cost per acquisition CPA bidding can help drive conversions.

When done right, the process is quick and painless.

Here are the steps needed to set up Target CPA bidding on the Adcash Advertiser platform.

Adcash CPA Target Bidding Lifecycle

Once you’ve set your initial CPA Target per campaign, the feature will match or come in lower than the target. We recommend setting an aggressive CPA Target to attract a flow of quality traffic from the start.

Learning Phase

CPA Target will first need to optimize its offering to your bidding requirements. It will spend time finding the best-performing segments. During this learning phase, you may see your average conversion costs exceeding the target. Rest assured, this is temporary. Once the CPA Target has optimized its bidding strategy to your requirements, you’ll start to see an average “cost per action” below the set target.

Exploitation Phase

The feature has now located the best-performing traffic segments and will start setting bids to get the maximum number of conversions at the lowest possible bidding cost.

How To Set CPA Target Bid on Adcash

Target CPA Bidding can be done quickly and effectively, straight from the Adcash Advertiser Dashboard, on either the Express Campaign or the Advanced Campaign.

What’s the Difference?

While both campaign types are easy to navigate and come packed with a bunch of helpful features, the Advanced campaign goes a little more granular than the Express.

Check out a quick comparison of each and find out where to set your new bid.

You can follow the below simple steps to set up your next bid.

Express Campaign 🎯

Head to the “Bid Section” on the “Budget Tab”
Select the “CPA Target” button
Fill in your CPA Target
Remember to set conversion tracking in place.
Choose your Daily Budget

Pro tip: Set a reasonably higher daily budget to maximize your exposure. Always keep your bid in line with the going target, which you’ll see displayed in the panel.

Advanced Campaign 🦾

Head to the “Bid Section” on the “Budget Tab”
Hit CPA Target
Set your Target Price (which can be different for each country)
Set your Conversion Tracking and save
Select your Daily Budget

Pro tip: Always set higher Target CPA bids and if your targeting is accurate you’ll get cheaper conversions every time!

Finally, we’ll end off with a quick success case to show you CPA Target Bidding in motion.

A well-known VPN service provider ran a campaign from July to December 2021 with impressive results. They came in 80% below cost on most months while boosting their ROAS.

Here’s how they did it.

Offer Type: VPN

Offer: VPN (cannot disclose brand)

Targeting Region: Multiple

Ad Format: Pop, Interstitial, In-Page Push

OS: Desktop & Mobile

Bid Type: CPA Target (with a $40 CPA goal)

Website Thematic Targeting: Arts & Entertainment-related websites only.

The campaign ran across 12 different GEOs with the top performers being the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Sweden.

Desktop took 92% of all conversions, with an Actual CPA vs. CPA Target ratio of 17.5% and an average conversion cost of $8.2 vs. target set at $40).

Mobile came out to 8% of all conversions, with an Actual CPA vs. CPA Target of 43.2% and an average conversion cost of $20.5 vs. target set at $40).

Overall, the actual CPA was consistently cheaper than the target, which is unorthodox for a Tier 1 Geo!

The total savings from the Target CPA Bid ran into the tens of thousands with a noticeable difference in Target Spending vs. Cost per Acquisition.