# Advertising through Takealot
Takealot gives you AI-backed advertising opportunities to promote your products and get multi-fold ROI (Return on Investment). You can advertise your products on [www.takealot.com](http://www.takealot.com) and the Takealot mobile app.
Promoting your products on Takealot leads to increased relevant traffic on your product pages and helps you close more sales.
# Introduction to Takealot Ads
Using Takealot, you can natively promote your products on takealot.com and the mobile app as **sponsored products**.
Takealot ads place your products as sponsored ads on multiple spots on takealot.com, attracting relevant traffic and substantially boosting the sales.
Your sponsored products can appear on **Takealot website (desktop and mobile)** and on **Takealot mobile app.**
## Ad Placements on **Takealot**
Sponsored product ads appear on the following pages on Takealot:
1. **Category Page Ads**
These ads appear on product category pages. For example, here is a sponsored ad appearing on the 'Homeware' product category page.
**2. Search Page Ads**
These ads appear on search pages, i.e pages that appear when a customer searches for a product by typing it in the search bar. Here is an example of a sponsored ad that appears when a customer searches for 'rug':
# Introduction to Dashboard
Post subscribing to Takealot Advertising, you land directly on the Dashboard.
The key features displayed on the Dashboard are:
* Order Log
* Funnel Metrics
* Performance Trend
* Program Contribution
* Your Campaigns
* Bid Settings - Target ROI/CPC
* Catalog Performance
# Order Log
Quickly check the number of orders driven in the last 30 days.
Click on the Order Log tab at the top right of your dashboard.
Clicking on this shortcut takes you the details of your order log for the past 30 days. For each order, you can view the respective Conversion Time, Order ID, Conversion Type, Currency, Sales (i.e. the order amount) and the Attribution Channel.
# Funnel Metrics
Funnel Metrics are displayed right at the top left of the Dashboard. They help you analyze the ad performances of the running campaigns.
The Funnel Metrics data is shown for the last 30 days by default and can be shown for the date range selected.
Let’s have a look at each Funnel Metric:
1. **Spend:** Total Ad Spends for the selected time period for all the campaigns, i.e. the amount of money spent on ads.
2. **Ad Impressions:** An impression is when an ad is viewed. Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account. Each time an ad is viewed, it is counted as one impression.
3. **Ad Clicks:** Total number of clicks on all the ads
4. **Orders:** Total number of purchases in the selected time period
5. **GMV:** Total Revenue earned through all the running campaigns, it is simply the value of all items sold through your ads, for example, if 10 items of R10 have been sold through ads, the GMV is R100
6. **ROI (Return on Investment):** Return on investment earned through all running campaigns for the selected time period, your ROI is simply the percentage of GMV divided by Spend. It shows you how many times the ad spend are you getting back in revenue. For example, if your Spend is R100 and GMV is R500, then the ROI = 500/100 = 5, i.e. you're getting 5 times return on your ad spend (or ROI) in revenue.
# Performance Trend
The Performance Trend space is a graphical way of analyzing the campaigns. Graphs are generated for the selected time range and Funnel Metric.
Performance Trend graphs can be generated for two Funnel Metrics at once for comparison.
To use Performance Trend,
1\. Select the **time range** for which you want to view the performance from the top right of the screen. Or you can simply view the data for the last **day, last week or the last month** through the shortcuts given at the bottom of the Performance Trend/Summary area.
2\. Select the Funnel Metrics for which you want to see the performance trends.
3\. The respective graphs for the selected Funnel Metrics will be shown. Hover over the graph to see the values of the selected Funnel Metrics for a given date.
# Program Contribution
The Program Contribution area graphically shows you the contribution of Takealot Ads to the overall sales performance through the following parameters:
1. **View Products:** Shows you the contribution of Takealot Ads in driving Product Views
2. **Add to Cart:** Shows you the contribution of Takealot Ads in driving Add-to-carts for your products
3. **Orders:** Shows you the contribution of Takealot Ads in driving product orders.
4. **GMV:** Shows you the contribution of Takealot Ads to the overall Revenue for your store.
> NOTE: The contribution of Takealot Ads (%) is represented in the blue colour of the respective circles.
> NOTE: Hovering over the widget shows you the exact contribution of Ads to the parameter in hand.
>
> For example, in the image shown below, one can see that Takealot Ads contributed to 7 (63.6%) product views out of the total product views.
# Your Campaigns
The campaign area helps you to perform the following functions for your campaigns:
### Activate/Pause a campaign
To activate/pause a campaign, click on the play/pause button at the left of the campaign card.
### Edit Ad Budget
To edit the budget of a campaign, click on the 'Edit Budget button. 'Budget Settings' screen will appear where you will see the following two options:
1. **Daily Budget -** Lets you enter/edit your daily budget
2. **Max Spend Cap** *(optional)* - The spend cap that you want to put for the entire duration of the campaign
Click on the 'Save' button to save the budget changes.
### **Product Exclusion**
Click on the Product Exclusion button to proceed with excluding the products you don't want to advertise. You'll land on the Product Exclusion drawer.
By default, the Product Exclusion is set to **AI mode**. Smart algorithms learn about your products and advertise the products that are more likely to grab attention. **AI Product Exclusion mode leads to ad performance optimization.**
However, you can **choose products manually by switching to Manual mode**. You can do this by excluding the products you don't wish to advertise.
> Kindly note that switching to Manual Mode may not result in optimum ad performance. Keep Product Exclusion to AI mode for best results.
To manually exclude the products you don't want to advertise,
1. Switch to Manual Mode from the toggle button at the top right.
2\. Click on Edit Product Exclusion.
3\. Select the products that you want to exclude. You can use the five filters: Product Name, Product Category, Product Brand, Price and Sale Price to sort the products.
Click on 'Exclude Selected Products' to confirm the changes.
# Bid Settings
### What is an ROI Target?
An **ROI (Return on Investment)** Target is the ROI that you aim to achieve through Takealot ad campaigns. This gives you more control over your campaign targets.
### Setting an ROI Target
To set an ROI (Return on Investment) Target,
1. Go to **Bid Settings** from the Dashboard from the Campaigns section.
2\. After landing on Bid Settings, select ROI as your bid setting.
3\. Set your **Campaign level target ROI** taking into consideration the **Suggested ROI**. Suggested Target ROI is calculated through Artificial Intelligence technology after analyzing various contributing factors like predictive SKU Score, SKU category, competition analysis, etc.
4\. **Category level** Target ROI and **SKU level** Target ROI can be set from Advanced Bid Settings.
## Frequently Asked Questions on Bid Settings (Target ROI and CPC)
#### 1. How do I choose between Target ROI and Manual CPC as the bidding setting for fulfilling my advertising goals?
We recommend setting **Target ROI** as the **bidding setting** if you have been marketing your products through **Takealot** for more than 6 months. This is because, for a period of 6 months, adequate data on the product catalog becomes available.
If you a new brand/seller on Takealot, or if you want to promote a certain type of products (for e.g. slow-moving inventory), we recommend choosing **Manual CPC** as the bid setting.
**2. How much ROI can I expect if I choose Manual CPC?**
Choosing **Manual CPC** leads to higher impressions and clicks for a product ad, resulting in an increase in product views. However, a specific ROI cannot be assured with the **Manual CPC** selection.
#### 3. What should I do if my actual ROI is less than the Suggested Target ROI?
Smart algorithms that power Takealot Ads campaigns are engineered to help you achieve the suggested Target ROI.
Suggested Target ROI is calculated by analyzing numerous factors like competition, applied discounts, inventory status, etc.
A change in some of these factors (after a Suggested ROI has been calculated), like top products going out of stock, exclusion of top products from advertising enabled catalog, changes in discount, competition changes, etc. can lead to actual ROI not matching the Suggested Target ROI.
#### 4. What are the different levels at which Target ROI or Manual CPC can be set?
Target ROI and Manual CPC can be set at three levels:
* SKU level
* Category level
* Store level
> **NOTE:** SKU level Target ROI or Manual CPC takes the highest precedence over Category level and Store level settings. The following is the priority given to the three levels.
>
> **SKU level** - highest precedence or priority
>
> **Category level** - higher precedence or priority than Store level setting but lower than SKU level setting
>
> **Store level** - lowest precedence
Here is an example to show the precedence or priority given to the three levels:
| Level | Product Details | Manual CPC in ZAR (**R**) |
| -------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
| SKU | Black t-shirt (SKU ID: 1) | 6 |
| SKU | Blue t-shirt (SKU ID: 2) | 7 |
| Category | Men's apparel (SKU ID: 3,4,...) | 5 |
| Store | | 4 |
* **SKU ID: 1** (Black t-shirt) and **SKU ID: 2** (Blue t-shirt) will have bids of **R**6 and **R**7 respectively.
* **SKU ID: 3**, which is an SKU in Men's Apparel category, will have a bid of **R**5
* All the **SKUs from the Women's apparel category** will have a bid of **R**4 as that category is covered at the Store level for which manual CPC is **R**4\`.
**5. How do I decide the level at which I should apply Manual CPCs or Target ROI?**
* Typically, we don't recommend setting a different Target ROI or Manual CPC at the **SKU level**. It can be utilized in certain situations when you want to boost impressions and clicks for a particular SKU.
* If your product portfolio falls under multiple product categories, (for e.g., FMCG and Fashion), then setting Target ROI or Manual CPC at the **Category level** is useful.
* If your products fall under a single category or under similar categories, then setting Target ROI or Manual CPC at the **Store level** is helpful.
**6. Why is the Suggested ROI low for my campaign?**
An aggressive Target ROI, i.e. higher the Suggested ROI, can result in a decrease in successful auctions for the advertised products, i.e. it can lead to unsuccessful bidding for the products. This directly lowers the ad performance, brings down the assisted conversions and negatively affects budget utilization. We recommend setting the Target ROI as the Suggested ROI.
#### 7. Why is the Suggested ROI high for my campaign?
A higher ROI suggests scope for better ad performance. Setting the Target ROI as Suggested ROI, in this case, will result in the **same number of conversions but in lesser ad spends.** Hence, the conversions (successful transactions) won't change, only that budget utilization becomes more optimized.
**8. I don't see any Suggested ROI. What should I do?**
Ideally, a Suggested ROI should be generated. If no Suggested ROI is generated, it suggests that the smart algorithms is still learning about your product category.
* If you are getting a good number of clicks and ad budget is getting spent, consider increasing the Target ROI.
* If you aren't getting a satisfactory number of clicks and the budget isn't getting consumed, decreasing the Target ROI will help.
####
# Catalog Performance
Catalog Performance displays the top-performing Products and Product Categories of your Store.
### Popular Products
Have a look at some of your top-performing products. For each product, you can see the View Products, Add to Carts, and Orders along with actual price and sales price.
### Popular Categories
You can view the top-performing product categories for your Store. For each product category, you can see the Spend, Impressions, Ad Clicks, Orders, GMV & ROI.
# How much ROI can I expect?
Smart algorithms make sure you get the best possible ROI.
This happens through multiple **smart processes** always working in the background. AI becomes smarter with more campaign data and results improve over time to give you the best possible ROI. The various smart processes include:
* Auto-budgeting
* Auto-bidding
* Auto-generated Creatives (Optimized for maximum engagement)
* Auto-product exclusion
... among many more processes that keep running to give you the best possible ROI.
You will certainly get better ROI than the previous ad cycle if you **put all the settings to the AI mode** (recommended).
# Why am I not getting a good ROI?
Best practices to get optimum ROI
One of the reasons for not getting a good ROI could be that your budget is not getting spent.
To get a good ROI, please make sure you follow the best practices:
* We recommend selecting a large number of products to advertise. To do so, we recommend keeping the Product Exclusion to the **AI Mode**. If you're going ahead with Manual Mode (not recommended), kindly make sure you're selecting a large number of products to advertise (i.e. you exclude a small number of products).
* Make sure your products have **clear and helpful titles and descriptions**. This increases the appeal of a product in front of a customer.
* It's best to have **clean, good-looking images** for your products to get maximum attention from the customers.
* If possible, make your product catalog has a diverse number of product categories. Having a **diverse catalog** increases the chances of getting a good ROI on your ads.
* A diverse catalog also means having products of various **price ranges**. This can too help boost your ad campaigns.
* Make sure the **product categories** are correctly marked.
* Analyze the price of your products. Make sure it's a perfect balance in terms of appeal and profit-margins.
# How long does it take for campaigns to get activated?
After you have activated a campaign from the 'Your Campaigns' area on your Dashboard, **it gets immediately activated**.
Your campaign will start fetching ad impressions and ad clicks within a few hours after you have activated a campaign.
# Which products are selected for ads and how are products chosen?
Your products are automatically chosen by **smart algorithms (AI)** for ad promotions. Your product feed is analyzed by smart algorithms to select the products that are more probable to bring in engagement via ads.
The calculations for product selection is done through a complex computational process that has been designed keeping in mind the best practices and our learning from the vast advertisement-data analysis.
Product selection keeps changing as processed by AI to make sure the best combination of products is advertised.
As your products are chosen by AI, you can be sure that the product selection will always bring in optimized ROI to you.
> You can go ahead with Product Exclusion manually using the Manual Mode. However, **we recommend using the AI Mode** for Product Exclusion at all times to get optimal ROI.
# What are the best practices to get optimum ROI?
We have come up with our recommendations after analyzing various patterns in hundreds of ad campaigns and observing Seller's activities on the Dashboard.
Here are the best practices to achieve optimum ROI:
* Make sure you have **titled the products** as correctly as possible.
* Make sure the **product categories are correctly marked**.
* The best ad engagements happen with good-looking, **optimized product images**. Make sure the images are as descriptive as possible taken in good light conditions, are not stretched or pixelated, and are high-quality images.
* Make sure your **product catalog is a diverse one** and includes products of all possible price ranges. Make sure you have listed all the products in the catalog and that the size of the product catalog is not small.
* Analyze the price of your products. Make sure it's a perfect balance in terms of appeal and profit-margins.
* Plan **attractive discounts** to attract more buyers and to quickly clear your inventory.
* Prepare for a Seasonal Sale period in advance. You can increase your ad spend budget in advance to get more sales during the Sale period.
* We recommend selecting a large number of products to advertise. To do so, we recommend keeping the **Product Exclusion** to the **AI Mode**. If you're going ahead with Manual Mode (not recommended), kindly make sure you're selecting a large number of products to advertise (i.e. you exclude a small number of products).
# My Budget is not getting spent. What should I do?
If your budget is not getting spent, it may be due to one of many possible reasons:
### 1. You have selected a small number of products to advertise
Go ahead with selecting more products for your campaigns. Or simply switch to the **AI-mode** for Product Exclusion and let the Smart Algorithms do the job optimally.
You can change the Product Exclusion Mode by clicking on the Product Exclusion button on either of the ad channels.
2\. **The Bid (Max. CPC) is not competitive**
Another reason for Budgets not getting uses is low Bid. The set Bid may not be competitive enough and hence isn't bringing the traction. **Try setting a higher bid through Bid Settings.**
3\. **Your catalog falls in a niche category**
It is possible that since your products fall in a niche category, ads aren't bringing the desired results. **Try expanding your product catalog** to have a wide range of prices to get better results.
# Creative Guideline
Please ensure that you adhere to the creative guidelines outlined below when you upload your creative and run an awareness campaign:
* Pertinent information (i.e. brand logo, CTA, copy, hero products, etc.) should be considered and sit within the outlined safe zone when designing.
* Any banner featuring liquor must include the South African Aware.org disclaimer.
* Takealot will NOT be making any amendments to any designs.
* Takealot.com is an inclusive brand that strives to represent a culturally rich and diverse nation, All imagery and communication published or associated with the brand must align with the company’s values.
* Racism, sexism, and any other form of discrimination are forbidden and all efforts must be made to ensure that content does not cause offense to any culture, race, gender, or religion.
* Verify that all imagery and copy cannot be construed as obscene, violent, graphic, abusive, defamatory, unlawful, harassing, threatening, discriminatory, or otherwise offensive.