Manage Target Groups and Budgets in Adfound

After you create a marketing campaign, Adfound analyzes your project and prepares an initial audience plan. For crowdfunding campaigns, it also suggests how to distribute the campaign budget. You can review these suggestions, manage target groups, set daily spending limits, and compare audience performance. The actions available to you depend on the campaign stage.

In this article

• Before you start
• Review your campaign setup
• Understand target groups
  • How target group rules work
  • Choose a spending strategy
• Manage target groups before launch
  • Add a target group
  • Edit or delete a target group
• Manage target groups after ads start
  • Create and activate a new target group
  • Pause or unpause a target group
• Manage daily spending for a crowdfunding campaign
  • Read the budget chart
  • Add a daily spending rule
  • Edit or delete a daily spending rule
  • Fix budget rule errors
• Review audience performance
• Resolve the "You have no active ads" issue

Before you start

Before you manage target groups or budget rules, review the following availability and campaign limits:

• The Target groups tab is available for all marketing campaigns.
• The Budget management tab is available only for crowdfunding campaigns.
• Every campaign includes the default Gamefound Users target group. You can't edit or delete this group.
• Most campaigns can include up to four target groups. Gamefound can increase this limit to a maximum of ten groups for selected campaigns. If Add target group is unavailable, your campaign may have reached its limit.
• Creator accounts can use Gamefound custom audiences, such as Gamefound Users and Gamefound Users lookalikes.

The actions available in the campaign settings change as the campaign moves through its lifecycle.

Table 1. Target group actions by campaign stage

Review your campaign setup

When you finish the campaign creation wizard, Adfound analyzes your project and prepares campaign suggestions.

When the analysis is ready, the campaign summary shows:

• the campaign start and end dates.
• the total campaign budget.
• the suggested daily spending distribution for a crowdfunding campaign.
• the target groups assigned to the campaign.
• the locations selected for ad delivery.

Adfound always includes the Gamefound Users target group. Campaigns with a larger daily budget may also receive a suggested Gamefound Users lookalikes group and related interests.

The campaign summary and the Campaign settings page show the same target group suggestions.

Use the links in the summary to open the relevant settings. You can also select Go to your marketing campaign to continue. The campaign remains a draft, so you can review and update its setup before launch.

Understand target groups

A target group defines a separate audience segment for ad delivery. A common way to create a target group is to select the interests that describe the people you want to reach. The available interests come from Meta.

Each target group can include:

• up to five custom audiences.
• up to five interests in the first interest group.
• up to five interests in the second interest group.

You can add a second interest group after you add at least one interest to the first group. The available interests match the interests available in Meta.

How target group rules work

Adfound uses OR and AND logic to combine the audiences and interests you select.

Items within the same list use OR logic. A person can match any item from that list.

For example:

Board Games OR Miniatures

Separate lists use AND logic. A person must match at least one item from each list that you include.

For example:

(Gamefound Users OR Gamefound Users lookalikes)

AND (Board Games OR Miniatures)

AND (Crowdfunding OR Collectibles)

An OR condition broadens the audience. Each additional AND condition narrows it.

Review the complete rule before you save the target group to make sure it describes the audience you want to reach.

If your campaign has a low budget, avoid creating more target groups than you need. Each additional target group increases the number of possible ad combinations, so consider your available budget when you decide how many target groups to use.

Choose a spending strategy

The spending strategy sets the target group’s initial budget weight. It doesn’t set a fixed percentage of the campaign budget.

Manage target groups before launch

Before the first ad becomes active, you can add, edit, and delete non-default target groups.

To open the target group settings:

1. Open your marketing campaign.
2. Go to Campaign settings.
3. Expand Settings.
4. Select Target groups.
5. Open the advanced settings to view the target group table.

Add a target group

Create a target group when you want to advertise to an additional audience segment.

To add a target group:

1. Select Add target group.
2. Enter a clear Target group display name.
3. Choose a Spending strategy.
4. Add a Gamefound custom audience, one or two interest groups, or a combination of both.
5. Add up to five items to each available list.
6. To add a second interest group, first add at least one interest to the first group.
7. Review the rule shown in the form.
8. Check the AND and OR connections.
9. Select Add target group.

Tip: Use a name that describes the audience, such as Gamefound lookalikes - board games. Clear names make target groups easier to identify in performance reports.

Edit or delete a target group

You can update or remove a non-default target group before the first ad becomes active.

To edit or delete a target group:

1. Find the target group in the advanced settings.
2. Open the More options menu.
3. Select Edit or Delete.
4. Review the confirmation message.
5. Confirm the change.

You can’t edit or delete the default Gamefound Users group.

Manage target groups after ads start

After at least one campaign ad becomes active, Adfound locks the active target group definitions. You can pause or unpause these groups, but you can’t change their audience rules or delete them.

You can still create another target group. Adfound saves the new group as inactive until you review and activate it.

Create and activate a new target group

A target group created after ad delivery starts remains inactive until you activate it. This lets you review its settings before it starts delivering ads.

To create and activate a target group:

1. Add and configure the target group.
2. Review the group in the advanced settings.
3. Confirm that its status is inactive.
4. Edit or delete the group if you need to correct its settings.
5. When the group is ready, open the More options menu.
6. Select Activate.
7. Review the confirmation message.
8. Select Activate target group.

After activation, you can pause or unpause the group. You can no longer edit its audience rules or delete it.

Pause or unpause a target group

Pause a target group when you want to stop the ads connected to that audience without removing the group from the campaign.

To pause or unpause a target group:

1. Open Campaign settings.
2. Select Target groups.
3. Open the advanced settings.
4. Find the target group.
5. Open the More options menu.
6. Select Pause or Unpause.
7. Confirm the action.

Pausing a target group also pauses the ads connected to it and marks them as inactive in Adfound. The ads may continue to deliver for a short time after you pause the target group.

If you pause every target group, all campaign ads stop delivering after the pause takes effect.

You can pause and unpause target groups after ad delivery starts and before the campaign ends.

Manage daily spending for a crowdfunding campaign

Adfound suggests how to distribute your crowdfunding campaign budget across campaign days based on Gamefound's experience with campaign performance. In most cases, you don't need to change this distribution.

Use Budget management when you have a specific reason to adjust spending on a future campaign day.

To open the budget settings:

1. Open your marketing campaign.
2. Go to Campaign settings.
3. Expand Settings.
4. Select Budget management.

The Budget management tab is available only for crowdfunding campaigns, including campaigns created before this feature became available.

You can change daily spending before the campaign starts and while it is active. You can create rules only for future dates within the campaign period.

Read the budget chart

The budget chart compares actual spending, Adfound suggestions, and the distribution created by your rules.

Use the chart legend to identify the following values:

• Actual budget distribution shows spending that Adfound has already recorded.
• Adfound budget distribution suggestion shows the recommended distribution for future campaign days.
• Budget distribution based on user rules shows the projected distribution after your manual changes.

The page also shows:

• the total campaign budget
• the remaining funds
• the total amount spent
• an estimate of how many campaign days the remaining funds can support

Adfound recalculates the forecast after each saved change.

Add a daily spending rule

Create a daily spending rule when you want to set a spending limit for a specific future campaign day.

To add a rule:

1. Open the advanced settings.
2. Select Add rule.
3. Choose the day when the rule applies.
4. Depending on the available options, select the first campaign day, the last campaign day, or a custom campaign date.
5. Enter the Spending limit.
6. Enter a display name when the field is available.
7. Select Add rule.

The minimum daily spending limit is 25 in the campaign currency.

A daily spending rule applies from midnight to midnight. If the campaign starts or ends during the selected day, the rule applies only to the hours included in the campaign period.

Adfound tries to spend up to the limit, but the actual amount may be lower.

Edit or delete a daily spending rule

You can update or remove a rule for a future campaign date.

To edit or delete a rule:

1. Find the rule in the table.
2. Open the More options menu.
3. Select Edit or Delete.
4. Review the confirmation message.
5. Confirm the change.

If a rule already exists for the selected date, the new rule replaces it after you confirm the change.

When you delete a rule, Adfound recalculates the daily budget distribution for the remaining campaign period.

Fix budget rule errors

Adfound checks the selected rule against the campaign dates, available funds, and all other daily spending rules.

You can’t save a rule when:

• the selected date falls outside the campaign period.
• the selected date is not in the future.
• the spending limit is lower than 25 in the campaign currency.
• the rule leaves another campaign day with less than the minimum amount.
• the planned future spending exceeds the available campaign budget.
• the remaining funds don’t allow Adfound to keep at least 25 for every remaining campaign day.

To fix the rule, lower the spending limit, edit or delete another future rule, or add funds to the campaign.

Adfound validates all saved and planned rules before it accepts the change.

Budget recommendation: Adfound may show a warning when the current budget may not support optimal performance for the rest of the campaign. Add funds or adjust future spending rules to update the forecast.

Review audience performance

Use the audience performance report to compare results from each target group.

To open the report:

1. Open Campaign settings.
2. Expand Analytics.
3. Select Audience performance.

The table shows one row for each target group. By default, Adfound sorts the rows by Conversions, from highest to lowest.

Table 2. Audience performance metrics

Select the information icon next to a column heading to read the metric definition in Adfound.

Resolve the "You have no active ads" issue

The campaign dashboard shows the You have no active ads issue when your campaign is active, but none of your ads are active. This can happen when you pause all target groups or pause all ads individually.

The issue disappears when at least one ad becomes active. It can appear again if all ads are paused later.

To restore ad delivery:

1. Open Campaign settings.
2. Select Target groups.
3. Activate an inactive target group or unpause an existing group.
4. Open the Ads tab.
5. Confirm that at least one ad is active.
6. If the campaign doesn’t have enough funds for its configured spending, add funds to continue delivery.

The issue uses the statuses set in Gamefound. A separate delivery restriction applied in Meta doesn’t trigger this specific issue.

Running out of funds also doesn't trigger the issue when the campaign has already reached its configured maximum spending amount.