Building the Retargeting Campaign: Bids, Frequency Caps, and Banners

Both pixels are placed. The audience-building code is on the landing page, the conversion code is on the thank you page. All that’s left is the campaign itself, and Vic Strizheus treats this lesson as the one where the theory finally turns into something running live. He walks through every setting in SiteScout’s campaign builder in order, not to overwhelm you with options, but to show that most of them only take a few seconds to decide once you know what each one is actually for.

What actually happens once your ad goes live?

Campaign basics starts simple: name the campaign, pick a destination URL. Here’s the detail worth catching, though. Rather than sending clicks to one static landing page, Vic Strizheus recommends a rotator link, splitting traffic across two or three page variations so you can keep seeing which one converts best, the same split-testing discipline from earlier in the course, just applied to where retargeted clicks land.

your ads are going to be everywhere

That’s the payoff once the campaign is funded and running, and it’s not an exaggeration. Because retargeting rides on top of massive existing ad networks, your banner can end up displayed across sites that would otherwise be entirely out of reach. Vic Strizheus points to Chitika as the clearest example: getting a direct account there takes a deposit most people simply don’t have lying around. As he puts it, “nobody has 50,000 bucks,” especially anyone just starting out. Through SiteScout’s retargeting setup, you reach that same network’s inventory without ever touching that minimum.

How much should you actually bid, and how often should your ad show up?

SiteScout runs on real-time bidding by cost per thousand impressions, meaning the highest bidder gets the top placement and everyone else falls in line behind them. Vic Strizheus leaves the default bid in place to start and adjusts from there once real performance data comes in. Frequency capping matters just as much: he personally caps his own ad at five impressions per twelve hours for a given visitor, not because that number is magic, but because some limit is what keeps a useful reminder from turning into an ad that feels like a stalker.

Budget follows the same conservative instinct. He tells beginners point blank to start low, suggesting a modest daily spend at first and scaling only once you can see the campaign actually converting. Flight dates let you control exactly which days the ad runs at all, useful if your offer only makes sense on weekends or a specific day of the week.

Where should your ad actually sit, and how do you get banners made?

Traffic sources is where you choose whether to target specific sites or, as Vic Strizheus prefers, run of network, letting your retargeted audience surface anywhere within SiteScout’s full reach. Page position matters too. He sets his own ads to display above the fold specifically so nobody has to scroll to see them. For the creative itself, rather than hiring a designer for every required banner dimension, he says plainly, “I would go to a page like $20banners.com,” as a fast way to get a full set built to spec.

A short checklist for a first campaign:

• Send clicks through a rotator link across two or three landing page variations, not one static URL.
• Cap ad frequency so the same visitor isn’t seeing you dozens of times a day.
• Start the daily budget modest and scale once the numbers prove out.
• Default to above-the-fold placement and run of network unless you have a specific reason not to.

None of these settings are complicated on their own. What makes the campaign work is going through them once, deliberately, instead of accepting every default without understanding what it controls.

What stands out watching Vic Strizheus build this live is how little of it is guesswork. Every setting traces back to a reason: the rotator link exists because single landing pages hide underperformance, the frequency cap exists because annoyance kills conversions, the modest starting budget exists because campaigns need real data before they deserve real money. Nothing here is dressed up as more advanced than it is. It’s a checklist you can actually execute tonight, on the same audiences and pixels you already built in the earlier lessons.

The full session walks through every field on screen as Vic Strizheus builds the campaign live. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

all right cool so we got the codes we got the retargeting code we got the conversion code all that stuff is placed on our pages right the rest is very very easy you know setting up a campaign with site scout is very intuitive okay it's very self-explanatory there is nothing to it you know again don't let you know any of the you know any of this stuff kind of confuse you because it's not okay what we're gonna do here is we're gonna go to campaign basics okay we're gonna set up a campaign now you can have we can run multiple campaigns for whatever it is that you're doing out there okay and as you can see setting up a campaign is broken down into different categories okay you got the general you know campaign basics information here we got the frequency cap we got the amount how much you want to spend budgeting all that good stuff okay so let's take it one step at a time again I'm not going to set up a campaign with you just because you know I've done this in the past and people just you know I've done this in the past and people just you know I've done this in the past and people just copied exactly what I did you know and obviously it's not very smart you know copied exactly what I did you know and obviously it's not very smart you know so what I would rather you what I would rather do is is is just kind of walk you so what I would rather you what I would rather do is is is just kind of walk you through this and talk about some of this stuff give you a few you know a few through this and talk about some of this stuff give you a few you know a few pointers here and there right and then what you will do is you just go out pointers here and there right and then what you will do is you just go out there and and you know kind of model what I show you and tweak it and plug there and and you know kind of model what I show you and tweak it and plug your own stuff into it and it's gonna work okay if you have any questions you always contact site scout they are awesome you can actually talk to them live on the phone very very good company awesome customer support love them you will love them too okay but again just keep in mind this is what i'm showing you is um is not anything too crazy advanced or anything right this is this will be enough for you to get your feet wet enough for you to get started with it enough for you to start building that audience that you're going to be retargeting right enough for you to start showing your ads on you know fox news and cnn and all all those cool sites all across the world right uh which is very very awesome so campaign name you know say just like it says campaign name what are you promoting right this is going to be visible to you only um you know itf campaign all right now destination click url let me just give you a couple pointers here okay this is where people will be redirected to um when they click on your ad okay remember in video number one in this module i showed you or video number two i don't even remember what video that was but you know we went to like foxnews.com and uh and there was uh you know this kajabi ad or for chalene johnson you know kajabi guys ran chalene johnson ad right promoting her um as affiliates remember that right well this right here destination click url is when i would click on that ad where would i get redirected to okay that's really what you know what what what this url is for so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to add my stream uh over here and i'm going to click on your name and a person ah here and i'm So where do you want them to go to uh and of course most of the time they'll go to your landing page right now here's a tip for you okay that can be worth its weight in gold um you can you can set a static um landing page here right or a specific url uh or if you want to be you know if you want to take things and kind of spice things up a little bit hey why not set up a rotator link and see which one is going to be performing the best.

Again, in the Capture Mastery part of this particular course, right, we talked about the importance of split testing. We talked about the importance of, you know, rotating your pages, right, tracking, make sure you know your stats, make sure that you know what's converting the best, and make sure that you're competing with yourself all the time, right, to constantly beat your best, you know, your best conversion, okay? Guess what? I'm going to do the same thing here, right?

I mean, you can split test this, so, you know, if you have an ability to put a rotator link, always take that opportunity, all right? So this, for me, I would put a rotator link with maybe three, you know, two or three different landing page URLs on that rotator link so that when people click on it, you know, they'll be displayed different landing pages, and you'll be able to see which one is converting the best, and then you'll be able to, you know, adjust your, you know, your rotator accordingly, right? Again, if you have no idea how to set it up, I encourage you to go back all the way to the beginning of this course, right, to Capture Mastery and watch those videos, okay?

Because there I show you what I use for, you know, for rotating, for tracking, all that stuff, okay? All right, so that's your destination URL. Default CPM. Now, CPM stands for per 1,000, okay?

So every time when this network shows your ad 1,000 times, how much are you willing to pay? Now, the default here is $3, okay? You can leave it at $3, you can say $5, $4, whatever, right? Now, keep in mind, this is a real-time bidding system, okay?

So whoever bids the most, all right, is going to get the number one position. Whoever bids the second most is going to get the number two position, and so forth, okay? So if you want your ads to show up, number one, number two, and so forth, okay? So if you want your ads to show up, number one, number two, you want to be the, you know, the highest bidder.

And you won't really know that until you set up your campaign, you let your campaign run for, you know, a couple days, and then you will be able to go back and see how it's performing for you. Or you can just talk to a SiteScout rep, account rep, right, and just say, hey, can you help me optimize this thing for myself, okay? And they'll be able to do that for you. Again, this is something we're going to be talking about in future classes when, you know, when we have round two, round three, you know, and we really, you know, take things to a more advanced level.

I'm not going to do that today on this particular video, because I don't want to confuse you. I want you to be able to, you know, have enough information for you to get started with it tonight, right away after watching this video. Get your feet wet, okay? So default, I'm going to leave it at $3 here.

Campaign status is going to be online. You can target, right, as you can see here, web and mobile. You can target web only, all right? If you, like, for example, if you don't have a mobile optimized website, then obviously you, would not, your ads to be displayed on mobile, okay?

That would be a waste of time, waste of money. So depends on what you have there, okay? Frequency cap. Now, this is how much your ad is going to show based on, you know, how many hours, whatever, okay?

So what I like to do here is I like to set it to five. Now, there is no right or wrong answer here. You can, you know, three times in 12 hours, five times in 12 hours. That's, you know, my thing personally is, you know, I just set it to five.

It doesn't mean that it's right. It doesn't mean that you have to do it, you know, for five. It's up to you. So in 12 hours, okay, I'm going to have, I'm going to allow this network to display my ad five times for that particular visitor, okay?

All righty. Now, going down to the budgeting, okay, how much are you willing to spend per day? All right, five dollars is where you actually adjust your amount, okay? You can spend ten dollars a day.

You can spend, now, don't go too crazy in the beginning, okay? If you haven't done anything like this before, don't go too crazy. You know, start low, man. Just, you know, start with like 10 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever you're comfortable with.

Heck, five dollars or not. I actually don't know if they allow you to do five dollars or not, but, you know, if they do, start with five bucks, but I'd say, you know, definitely start with at least ten dollars and you will deliver your, you will deliver your impressions evenly throughout the day, okay, which is recommended. You know, make sure you have this checked. You will spend that on daily, okay?

View through conversions. This is something that you can do, okay? If you click on enable here, you will be able to select the campaign that you want the conversions to be displayed for. Now, I don't really care about this, to be honest with you.

So I'm going to, disable that, okay? Flight date is when, you know, when do you want to start and stop your campaign. Again, depending on what niche you're in, depending on what you're promoting, maybe there is, you know, maybe you're running an offer or you're targeting an audience that you only want your ads to run on weekends, for example, right? Or maybe you want your ad to run on a certain day of the week, right?

This is where you can control that, okay? That's pretty much, you know, for the campaign basics. Now, then what we're going to do is once you have this all set up, okay, we'll go down and we'll click on traffic sources, okay? Traffic sources.

Now, traffic sources is where do you want your ads to be displayed, okay? So when somebody, again, we will be displaying our ads to people who are in our retargeting cloud, okay? Who are, in our retargeting audience. Now, those people can be on any one of these networks, okay?

There is, there is thousands upon thousands of sites. And what I will do is, you know, you can, you can specify individual sites here, okay? As you can see here, 300 million impressions and so forth, okay? I mean, ridiculous, okay?

Absolutely ridiculous. So you can specify, you know, individual sites here, YouTube, eBay, all that stuff, right? Or what I like to do personally is just say run of network, okay? Run of network basically means that your ad can be displayed on any site that is a part of SiteScout's network, which is fine with me.

Now, they will pop you, you know, they'll pop up this little message saying, hey, you know, if you're just doing, if you're just doing a straight up campaign without retargeting, you know, you better watch out because you, you know, I mean, you're going to spend a lot of money. But because we are using retargeting, right? Because we are custom targeting our audiences, we don't really have to worry about this. I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to click on I understand, continue with run of network.

And then so, you know, I'm going to be running on all of the networks here, Chitika. Look at that, Chitika. You know, for me to, for you to go to Chitika and start a campaign on Chitika, you have to deposit like $50,000, literally, like 50,000 bucks to get started with Chitika.com, okay? Which is one of the, one of the, you know, more, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really, really, really cool network, put it that way.

But it's, it's very, very expensive. I mean, very, I mean, nobody has 50,000 bucks, especially if somebody who's just beginning, you know, starting to, to dabble into this kind of stuff, you know, to just, you know, just laying around to invest, you know, on an ad campaign from the get go, right? But you can get to Chitika, right? And you can get to their network.

See, Chitika is not just a site, it's a network. It's a giant, massive network, right? So you, we can, we can get to that and we can use their sites, right? And we can advertise on their network through SiteScout by just doing retargeting.

How awesome is that? See that? So I mean, my friend, your ad, your ads are going to be everywhere. They're going to be on, you know, Google's networks, they're going to be on, you know, PulsePoint, I mean, everywhere, okay?

Everywhere, everywhere, which is awesome. All right, now, another thing is this, is your page position, okay? I personally want my ads, to show up above the fold, meaning, so when somebody opens up a website or, you know, somebody goes to a particular page, okay? CNN, Fox News, whatever, right?

Particular site. I want my ad to be showing up so that people don't have to scroll down to see it, right? Make sense? So that's called above the fold.

I'm just going to click on above the fold and, and just keep it at that, okay? So when, you know, if there is a space open for an ad, like on the, you know, way on the bottom of the page, you want that, you know? I want my ad to show up in the top, okay? So that's your traffic sources.

That's pretty much it, okay? It's simple as that, see that? And then the last thing we need to do is we need to click, actually, you know, I think before last, is we'll go to creatives, okay? And this is where you actually load up your banners, okay?

I'm not going to do this with you because it's very, very, very, very easy, very simple to do, okay? Over here, if you just hover over this little question mark, you're going to see that you're going to see that you're going to see that you're going to see that you're going to see that you're going to see that you're going to see that here are different dimensions, okay? Different sizes for your banners that's allowed for this network. What I'll suggest you do, okay, is you go to, you go to, you know, if you're going to do this, right, which is, I mean, I don't see why you wouldn't.

This is so good, okay? I would go to a page like $20banners.com, okay? $20banners.com and just, you know, create yourself a whole bunch of banners, you know? For these sizes right here, okay?

Just literally write them down, okay? And then go to this page right here and then, you know, and just create yourself a whole lot of banners, okay? Spend some money, you know, if that's what you want to do and this way you'll be able to cover pretty much every banner that's available on the network, okay? Once you have those banners created, you'll click on upload banner.

Of course, you will, you know, load up your banners one at a time. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Very easy, okay? We can then go, and check out GEO targeting.

By default, this is going to say United States. You can also add United Kingdom, okay? See, boom. We can also add Canada, Australia, and let's see, that's four, one, two, three, four, right?

And then, let's see, what am I missing? What am I missing? What am I missing? I think I'm missing something.

What's the country that's next to Australia? New Zealand, yeah. There you go, New Zealand. That's an English-speaking country, too.

I can add that as well. New Zealand, come on over here, all right? So, five countries, shikibumbadaboom, all right? We are good to go, my friend.

Also, what we're going to do is click on save, okay? I'm not going to do that because, you know, I haven't filled out my stuff here completely. So, when you click on save, all you need to do then is just fund your account, okay? As soon as you fund your account, you give it like 24, 48 hours and your ad will be showing up and running and, my friend, you are on your way to retargeting those people, okay?

Again, that's how you set up a campaign, very intuitive, very simple. Nothing is complicated these days. I mean, networks right now, they're trying to compete with each other, right? Whoever is going to have the most intuitive system, whoever can attract the most customers and advertisers and business, you know, and they do that by, you know, by making their systems run, you know, as simple as possible.

So, if you're going to do that, you're going to do it as simple as possible, especially for guys like you, like myself, so that they can attract more people. And SiteScout is awesome. I mean, I love them. I do a lot of business with them and, you know, and I think you will absolutely love them too, okay?

Definitely check them out. That's one way to, you know, to amplify your traffic like crazy, all right? While paying very, very little money for it, my friend. Go, get this done, prosper.

I'll see you in module number next one. All right, bye. Thank you.