Advertising

Create a campaign

Campaigns are created in the Advertise tool. Sign in, name the campaign, upload an image, and set the destination URL. The destination must be on a site you have verified in Monetize.

Choose the number of impressions, a CPM bid, a CPC bid, and optionally a daily budget and a schedule. The package is charged to your Points balance when you submit; any ad credits are used first. Check the total on the form before buying.

Bids and budget

Every campaign bids per impression and per click together. The CPM bid is the most you pay for 1,000 impressions. The CPC bid is charged instead of the impression when a visitor clicks, so a clicked view costs the click bid rather than both.

Bids are entered in US dollars with up to two decimal places. The publisher guide covers how bids are scored against publisher floors.

The package costs your CPM bid for each 1,000 impressions, rounded up to a whole Point. Click charges come out of the same budget, so a campaign with many clicks can reach its budget before it delivers the full impression count.

A campaign stops when its purchased impressions or budget run out. A daily budget pauses delivery for the rest of the UTC day. Closing a campaign refunds the part it has not delivered.

Creative sizes

Upload a PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP or AVIF image. Placements are shaped around these sizes, so one of them fits without scaling:

Other sizes are scaled to fit and read worse in a tight slot. Keep about 10px of clear space around text and logos. The publisher guide covers how each placement is shaped.

Testing several images

A campaign can carry up to eight versions of the same ad. Add them when you create the campaign, or later from Edit. Delivery rotates between the active versions in proportion to each one's share, and the campaign report compares their impressions, view rates and click rates side by side.

A version is marked as the leader once it has at least 100 impressions and a click, so a lucky click or two is not treated as a winner. Pause a version to stop showing it without deleting its history.

Review and delivery

New creatives are reviewed by staff before they can serve. A rejected creative stays out of the auction until you edit it and submit it again. Editing a campaign also sends it back for review. When automatic approval is enabled, new creatives skip the queue and can serve immediately.

Targeting is optional. Categories are matched against the publisher's allow and block lists. Keywords match the topics of the page: a campaign tagged for the page is preferred, untagged campaigns are general inventory, and a campaign tagged for another topic runs only when nothing else is eligible.

Approved campaigns enter an auction for each placement. Campaigns are ranked on expected payout, which combines the CPM bid with the expected click premium. The highest expected payout wins, and a campaign that loses an auction pays nothing. A campaign also needs budget left, a matching schedule, and a creative that fits the slot.

A view is recorded when at least half of the ad has been on screen for a full second. A click is billed only when the interaction is verified; automated or implausible clicks are not charged.

Reports

Open a campaign from the Advertise tool to see its report. The window can be 7, 14, 30 or 90 days.

The report shows impressions, clicks, click rate, delivered units, units remaining, average CPM and CPC paid, delivered spend, and remaining budget. It also has a daily chart and breakdowns by image version, placement, site, hour of day in UTC, weekday, device, and country.

Download the daily rows as CSV or the full report as JSON. The dashboard totals every campaign for the same window.