How can Quantcast help win new business or create pitches?
The platform's tools are designed to help agencies grow their business. The Audience Insights tool is particularly powerful for new business pitches, as it can analyze a prospect's website or their competitors' to generate unique, data-backed audience personas.
How do you manage multiple clients or team members on the platform?
The platform is structured with a main organization account (for the agency) under which multiple client accounts can be created. This keeps all client data siloed and secure. Within the "Organization Manager," you can add new users and assign specific roles like "owner," "admin," or "member" to control their access levels and permissions for different accounts.
How does the platform handle agency fees?
You can add an agency fee directly into the campaign setup. This fee is then incorporated into the total cost and can be reported separately, which simplifies billing and reporting for clients.
What is the platform's pricing model?
Answer: The pricing model is based on a dynamic Cost Per Mille (CPM), which is the cost per thousand ad impressions. All platform fees, data costs, and service charges are bundled into this single CPM, so there are no hidden or additional fees.
How can we manage or change campaign budgets?
Budgets are flexible and can be adjusted at any time during a campaign. You can set a total "flight" budget for the entire campaign duration or a "daily" budget. The platform also offers a Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) feature that automatically allocates the budget to ad sets in real time.
How do you handle campaign budget pacing?
You can choose different pacing options for your budget. "Even" pacing spreads the budget equally across the campaign's duration, while "custom" pacing allows you to allocate more budget to specific days, which is useful for promotions or weekends. You can also set the campaign to "pace ahead" to spend more aggressively at the start.
How does audience targeting work in a cookie-less environment?
Quantcast is not reliant on third-party cookies. The platform was built to work in cookie-less environments like Safari and Firefox and uses a multi-signal, probabilistic approach to identify and target users. This involves using its first-party pixel data, contextual signals, and other identifiers to create a comprehensive view of user behavior, which expands audience reach and often results in lower CPMs.
What is the "Audience Insights" tool and how does it work?
The Audience Insights tool is a key feature for planning and strategy. It allows you to build and analyze audience personas in real-time by inputting criteria like keywords, demographics, or even a website URL. The tool provides a detailed breakdown of the audience's demographics, content interests, and online behaviors, which can be used to validate targeting strategies and inform creative messaging.
How are lookalike audiences created?
Lookalike audiences are built by the platform's AI, which analyzes a "seed audience" of your choice, such as website converters, site visitors, or an uploaded CRM list. The AI identifies patterns and shared online behaviors within the seed group and then finds new, prospective customers across the open internet who exhibit similar characteristics, making them highly likely to be interested in your product or service.
How does the platform ensure brand safety?
Brand safety is managed through a default global blocklist that filters out fraudulent and inappropriate sites. Clients can also upload their own custom allowlists and blocklists for more granular control.
What should we do if the pixel is not firing correctly?
If a pixel isn't firing, first check with the website development team to ensure it was placed correctly. Common issues include incorrect placement, a Content Security Policy (CSP) on the website blocking the pixel's domains , or incorrect trigger conditions in the tag manager.You can see pixel firing status in the platform's pixel dashboard.
What is the difference between a base pixel and an event pixel?
A base pixel (or page tag) is a universal pixel that should be placed on all pages of a website to gather overall audience data. An event pixel is a more specific tag designed to fire on a particular action or page, such as a "thank you" page after a purchase, to track conversions.
How do we track specific conversion events like button clicks or form submissions?
You can tag specific conversion events using either a URL-based rule (e.g., firing the pixel when the URL contains "thank-you") or a data pass-back event for actions like button clicks. This allows the platform to optimize towards specific goals and provides more granular data for lookalike modeling. It's also crucial to pass back variables like revenue and order IDs for detailed attribution.
Can we track offline conversions?
Yes, the platform offers a conversion API that can ingest offline data, such as qualified leads from a CRM or offline sales. This allows for optimization and attribution based on conversions that don't happen on the website.
How are creative assets and tags uploaded and managed?
Creatives can be easily uploaded by dragging and dropping the files into the platform's creative library. The platform also supports third-party ad server tags (e.g., from Google Campaign Manager, DoubleVerify), which can be uploaded in the same manner or via a tag sheet.
How can we improve campaign performance, for example, by lowering CPA or increasing conversions?
There are several optimization strategies available:
Broaden Targeting: Overly narrow or restrictive targeting can limit the AI's ability to find converting users and increase costs. Loosening constraints can often improve performance.
Budget & Bidding: Increasing the CPM can make bids more competitive. For campaigns with multiple ad sets, using Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) allows the AI to automatically shift spend.
Creative Refresh: Introducing new ad creatives can combat audience fatigue and provide a performance lift.
Also, consider expanding to include both cookie and cookieless inventory.
How does the platform's AI optimize campaigns?
The platform's AI autonomously and continuously optimizes campaigns in real-time. It analyzes trillions of data points to create predictive models, scores users based on their likelihood to convert, and automatically adjusts bidding and delivery to achieve the campaign's specific goal (e.g., lowest CPA or highest ROAS).
What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) we should monitor?
The most important KPIs depend on the campaign's objective.
For performance campaigns, key metrics include Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and total conversions.
For consideration campaigns, metrics like Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Site Visit are important.
For awareness campaigns, focus on Reach, Frequency, and Video Completion Rate (VCR).
Why is campaign performance fluctuating or dipping?
Performance fluctuations can be caused by various factors, including:
Seasonality or Market Trends: General dips in consumer demand can impact performance.
Technical Issues: Problems like a pixel no longer firing correctly due to website changes can cause a sudden drop in tracked conversions.
Budget Changes: Large, sudden increases in budget can force the AI to "re-learn," leading to temporary CPA spikes.
Creative Fatigue: Over time, an audience may become unresponsive to the same creative, leading to a decline in performance.
How does a brand awareness campaign impact the performance of a conversion campaign?
Running brand awareness and performance campaigns simultaneously creates a powerful synergistic effect. Data shows that users who are exposed to both upper-funnel (awareness) and lower-funnel (performance) ads are significantly more likely to visit the website and convert compared to users exposed to only one type of ad.
What is a good frequency cap for a campaign?
The ideal frequency cap depends on the campaign objective. For brand awareness, a higher frequency can be effective to ensure the message resonates. However, for performance campaigns, it's often recommended to leave the cap open or set it at the ad set level, allowing the algorithm to determine the optimal frequency for driving conversions without being overly restricted.
Does Quantcast offer creative services?
Yes, Quantcast has an in-house creative team or "creative studio" that can help build and design ad assets. This service can include creating animated display ads, repurposing social media content for programmatic channels, or building high-impact rich media units. This service may come with a small CPM upcharge.
What are the best practices for creative assets?
To maximize performance, it is recommended to use standard IAB ad sizes and provide a variety of sizes to unlock more inventory. Creatives should have a clear call-to-action (CTA) to drive clicks. For native ads, it's best to use plain lifestyle images without text overlays and provide the headline and copy separately.
Can we use our social media assets for programmatic campaigns?
Yes, you can repurpose existing assets from social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn for use in programmatic display, video, or CTV campaigns. Creative partners or Quantcast's in-house studio can help adapt this content for the open web.
How can we test different creative variations?
You can run multiple creative assets within a single ad set. For more controlled testing, you can set up separate ad sets for each creative. The Brand Lift Live tool is also an excellent way to A/B test different creatives to see which one drives a higher lift in brand metrics.
What kind of reports are available on the platform?
The platform offers a robust reporting suite that includes:
A customizable campaign dashboard for a high-level overview of key metrics.
A custom report builder that allows you to create detailed reports with specific metrics and breakdowns (e.g., by domain, device, geo, or creative).
An Insights Lab with pre-built visual reports like the "Funnel Visualize," "Media Mix Performance," and "Performance Lift" reports to tell a deeper story about campaign impact. Reports can be downloaded as a CSV or scheduled for automatic email delivery.
How does Quantcast handle attribution for conversions?
The platform tracks both click-through conversions (user clicks an ad and converts) and view-through conversions (user sees an ad, doesn't click, but converts later). The majority of programmatic conversions are typically view-through. The default attribution window is often 30 days but can be customized. The platform uses a last-touch model, attributing the conversion to the last Quantcast ad the user interacted with.
What is a Brand Lift Live study?
Brand Lift Live is Quantcast's proprietary tool for measuring the impact of a campaign on brand metrics like awareness, consideration, and favorability. It works by surveying a control group (not exposed to the ad) and an exposed group in real-time. Its key differentiator is providing real-time results, which allows for mid-campaign optimizations to improve brand lift—a feature not available in traditional, post-campaign studies.
Why might the conversion data in Quantcast differ from other tools like Google Analytics?
Discrepancies are common and often arise from differences in attribution methodology. Quantcast tracks view-through conversions, which many other platforms, including Google Analytics, do not. Quantcast can also track users in cookie-less environments, which other tools may miss. Finally, different attribution window settings between platforms can also lead to different numbers.
Can we see where our ads are being placed?
Yes, you can run a domain-level report to get a full list of the websites and apps where your ads were served. This provides transparency and allows you to add any undesirable sites to a blocklist.
Can we track the customer journey or time to conversion?
Yes, the Insights Lab includes reports that visualize the customer journey. The "Funnel Visualize" report shows how users move from awareness to conversion , and another report shows the average time between a user's last ad exposure and their conversion.
How is CTV performance measured?
CTV performance is measured using several metrics. For awareness goals, key metrics are video completion rate (VCR) and brand lift. For performance goals, the platform can track site visits and conversions driven by CTV ads by connecting cross-device activity. Reports like the "media mix performance" or "overlap report" can also show how CTV campaigns provide a lift to lower-funnel channels like display.
What is the difference between in-stream and out-stream video ads?
In-stream video ads play before, during, or after other video content (e.g., a pre-roll ad on a news site's video clip). Out-stream video ads are standalone video units that appear within non-video content, such as in the middle of a text article as a user scrolls.
How does audio advertising work on the platform?
The platform supports audio advertising on streaming music services and podcasts. This channel is primarily used for upper-funnel awareness campaigns. You can target specific content types (music vs. podcasts) and layer audience data on top of the inventory.
How does the platform handle a multi-channel or omnichannel strategy?
The platform is designed for an omnichannel approach, meaning you can use the same audience segment across all available channels—display, video, CTV, native, and audio. This ensures consistent messaging and a seamless user journey. The platform's reporting tools, like the "media mix performance" report, can show how different channel combinations work together to drive conversions and other goals.