How to set your PPC advertising budget to maximise results

Here we will share Yahoo! JAPAN’s recommended methods for optimising your PPC campaign budget. You can find the original article in Japanese here.

Yahoo! JAPAN is Japan’s no.1 web portal with 79 billion page views a month1. Furthermore, it’s Japan’s second largest search engine with 18% market share. Although it is second to Google as a search engine, Yahoo! JAPAN has more monthly digital users than Google. To learn more about the platform and our service offering, visit our Yahoo! JAPAN service page and this blog article that compares Yahoo! JAPAN and Google.

What is a “daily campaign budget”?

A daily campaign budget is the amount of money set for each campaign per day. The Yahoo! JAPAN Ads system will automatically control whether the ads will be displayed or not so that the campaign’s total click fee will be kept within the set amount.

However, when clicks are concentrated due to a temporary increase in the number of searches caused by seasonal or media information, the budget may be used up in the early hours of the day, subsequently missing opportunities that could have been acquired if there was enough budget.

On days when ads are displayed frequently, ads may be placed up to a maximum of 200% of the daily budget, but since delivery is adjusted on a monthly basis, this results in lost opportunities. Checking the depleting budget frequently and setting it well in advance will lead to improved advertising effectiveness.

For which campaigns do you recommend reviewing the daily campaign budget and what is the minimum spend?

Here are two ways to determine which campaigns require a budget review.

1. Campaigns with a daily campaign budget spend ratio of 80% or higher and a low CPA

Campaigns with a high budget spend and low CPA (cost per acquisition) – in other words, campaigns with good cost-effectiveness – should be given the highest priority in reviewing budget settings.

As you can see above, increasing the budget for Campaign C will increase the overall acquisition efficiency of the account, resulting in an increase in conversions and a decrease in CPA.

2. Campaigns with a daily budget spend of 80% or more

Although the priority of this campaign type is lower than the campaign mentioned earlier in 1, if the cost of digestion is higher than the set budget, you are losing the opportunity to display your ad. If possible, we recommend reviewing your budget settings.

In the above diagram, we can determine that we need to adjust the budgets of campaigns A and B.

*Tip
In the ad management tool, if there is a loss in the number of times your ad is shown due to an insufficient budget, a “!” will be displayed in front of the amount in the “Daily Budget” column.

What are the guidelines for increasing the daily campaign budget?

Search Ads

The “lost impression share” is displayed in the ad management tool. This is the ratio of the number of times your ad was not displayed to the total number of ad display opportunities.

You can set the amount calculated by multiplying the current daily campaign budget by the lost impression share and continue to adjust it by checking the depletion rate frequently to maintain an appropriate budget amount.

Display Ads

Since there is no indication of the lost impression share for display ads, set the amount calculated so that the total cost as of the previous day is less than 80% of the current daily campaign budget, and continue to check and adjust the depletion rate.

For example, if the daily budget is 100,000 JPY and the total cost is 95,000 JPY, it is recommended to set the daily budget to 120,000 JPY or more.

*Note: it may take 1 to 3 days for the lost impression share to be reflected in the data.

Also check the “Optimisation tab” in the ad management tool

In the “Optimisation Tab” in the “Paid Search Ads” section of the ad management tool, the system will suggest the best plan for the daily campaign budget in order to improve the loss of display opportunities caused by insufficient budget.

In addition, it is also possible to suggest the best keywords based on past distribution results. To use the “Optimise” function, please log in, select “Paid Search”, and then select the “Optimise” tab.

The “Optimisation tab” suggests the best keywords for your account

The optimisation suggestions will be based on the operation status of your account, so there may be cases where nothing is displayed. 

*Note: if you change the daily campaign budget in the middle of the day, the method of controlling the number of ads posted will differ depending on the timing and number of times you change it.

Need help with any of the technical details of adjusting your Yahoo! JAPAN campaign budget? Our team of bilingual Japanese PPC experts can support you or your agency with your search or display ads, for free! In order to take advantage of our complimentary support, all you need to do is open an ad account through us or contact us if you already have an existing ad account. Get in touch to learn more about our services and to start advertising in Japan. 

¹Source: Yahoo! JAPAN Media Sheet (November 2020)