BookBub Ads is a new way for advertisers — authors, publishers, agents, and other publishing professionals — to reach millions of power readers via dedicated ad space in BookBub’s daily email.
When you create a BookBub Ads campaign, you decide which readers you want to target and how much you’re willing to pay for an impression from those readers (one opened email = one impression). When a reader opens an email, BookBub serves the ad of the highest bidder targeting that reader at that moment.
Once you have access to BookBub Ads, you can set up your first campaign by following these steps:
Step 1: Log in to your dashboard
You can always find your dashboard at partners.bookbub.com — or in the footer of any BookBub page.
Step 2: Create a new ad
On the homepage of your dashboard, click the Create An Ad button.
Next, choose the book you’ll be promoting. Note: If you are planning to upload your own ad image, this step is not necessary, but it will allow for easier filtering of your campaigns.
Next, you can choose whether to upload your own creative (a 300 x 250-pixel PNG, JPG, or JPEG image) or build new creative. When building new creative, if you selected a book in the step above but would like to use a different cover image — or if you didn’t select a book above — simply click Select file to upload a new image.
Step 3: Set the click-through link(s)
Next, finalize the click-through links — this is where readers will be directed when they click on your ad.
If you entered a book in Step 2, BookBub will automatically pull in the book’s retailer links. Click Check Link next to each retailer to enable each link. Your ad will automatically target readers in the relevant regions and link them to their preferred retailer in order to maximize the ad’s conversions to sale. You can edit or add additional retailer links if necessary.
If you did not enter a book in Step 2, you will need to enter a URL. If you enter the URL for a region-specific product page on a specific retailer site, your ad will automatically target readers in that region who prefer that retailer.
If you enter a non-retailer-specific URL, you’ll need to set your own region and retailer targeting. For example, if you want to target Amazon Kindle readers in all available regions, you would need to select Amazon for each region.
Step 4: Set your audience targeting
You can choose to target your ad based on any combination of author interest and book categories.
Use author targeting to reach readers who have expressed interest in specific authors. You can enter as many or as few authors as you’d like. Keep an eye on the audience dial at the bottom of the page, which will update to indicate your estimated maximum daily reach based on your targeting.
Use book category targeting to reach readers interested in any combination of book categories. Note: Combining this option with author targeting means you’ll only reach readers who are interested in both the selected book categories and authors.
Step 5: Set a schedule and budget
- Set a schedule: You can choose to run your ad continuously or set a fixed period of time for your campaign to run. If you choose to run your ad continuously, it will serve until you manually turn it off. If you choose a fixed period of time, you can customize the pacing of your campaign. Pacing your budget evenly will spread your spend out across the entire length of your campaign, while fulfilling your budget as quickly as possible means you’ll win all the impressions for which you’re the highest bidder regardless of your end date (meaning your entire budget may be spent before your end date).
- Set a budget: Enter the amount you are willing to spend in total (if running a campaign with fixed dates) or per day (if running your ad continuously). The minimum total budget for a BookBub Ads campaign with fixed dates is $1. For a campaign with continuous ads, the minimum daily budget is also $1.
Step 6: Set your bid
Enter your maximum CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) bid. Your bid is the maximum amount that you would be willing to pay per 1,000 impressions.
If you are the highest bidder for the audience you’re targeting, you will win the impressions for that audience — but instead of paying your maximum bid, you will actually pay one cent more than the price of the second-highest bid for those impressions.
For example, imagine a scenario where three campaigns are targeting the same readers today:
- Advertiser 1: $6.00 bid
- Advertiser 2: $5.00 bid
- Advertiser 3: $4.00 bid
In this example, Advertiser 1 would win the impressions at a $5.01 CPM (one cent more than the second-highest bid). Now imagine that Advertiser 2 finished serving today, leaving Advertiser 1 and Advertiser 3 competing for impressions tomorrow. Advertiser 1 would still win, but that advertiser would now be paying a $4.01 CPM (one cent more than the new second-highest bid).
Learn more about how the BookBub Ads auction model works here.
Step 6: Name your ad
Lastly, name your ad. The ad name is visible only to you in your dashboard. An example naming convention could be: [Book Title] – [Retailer] – [Date].
Once you’re finished, you can save the ad as a draft or click Continue to enter your payment information and launch or schedule your ad. BookBub Ads update in near real time, so you can start an ad at any time. If you have any questions about BookBub Ads billing, please refer to these FAQs.
Step 8: Monitor and edit your campaign
Click Ads in the top navigation of your dashboard to access ad reporting. Impression and click counts update hourly.
You can also edit your campaign whenever you’d like, or create multiple ads to simultaneously target different audiences. BookBub’s auction ensures that advertisers never bid against themselves.
Do you have any questions about running BookBub Ads? Let us know in the comments below!
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Click to tweet: Tutorial: How to Use @BookBub Ads to Promote Any Book – http://bit.ly/1qP5UFi by @DianaUrban #bookmarketing #pubtip
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