Upon submission, more than 50 algorithms go to work in tandem to recommend each piece of content to the most interested readers across our network. For several days after submission, each piece is placed in an “exploration phase” to try and appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
During this phase, your campaign will be prioritized to help with scaling. The Exploration Phase is also an important indicator on how successful your campaign will be. If you notice that your campaign isn’t performing well during this phase, there could be some factors causing it.
However, while every ad is unique, the way our algorithms recommend your content can be largely grouped into the following four buckets:
Personal: The reader’s personal preferences
Behavioral: Readers which share near-identical preferences
Contextual: Content related to the environment in which it is recommended
Popularity: Content which is trending across our network for click-through rate
To get an idea of how many customers will view your content in our network, take a look at the Reach Estimator in the right-hand sidebar when setting up a campaign. This tool will provide you with a 30-day potential reach and allow you to make smarter targeting decisions.
When submitting a campaign or optimizing an existing one, you can determine if your potential reach is too broad or too specific, and make adjustments accordingly.
Currently, the estimator takes Custom Audience segments, location targeting (country-, region-, and state-level), and device targeting into consideration.
After the initial “exploration phase,” the algorithms will automatically optimize towards the most engaged headlines in your campaign. They will filter out the best performing content and serve it more frequently to peak the interests of your audience. This is why having multiple headlines is so important as it gives our algorithms more options so they hone in on the best headlines for your campaign.
If you wish to drive traffic to all of the content in each campaign, you can learn how to accomplish this with these tips.