New Campaign Guide: step-by-step setup in PPCmate X

This guide walks through creating a campaign in PPCmate X, from choosing the ad format to saving. It also explains what each setting does. You pick the format first, and the campaign page then shows only the sections that apply to that format. Only a few fields are required. The rest are there to help you control cost and quality.

In a hurry? Go to Campaigns and click the ✨ AI Wizard button next to New Campaign. The wizard works on every ad format except Microsoft Search (full walkthrough: Creating a campaign with the AI Campaign Wizard):

  1. Enter your page URL and a campaign name.
  2. Choose an ad format, or Let AI choose.
  3. Set your goal, bid, daily budget and countries. A live forecast updates as you go.
  4. Review the ad the AI writes, then launch.

Before you start

Step 1: Choose the ad format

Go to Campaigns → New Campaign. The first screen asks What are you running? Pick a format from the list on the left. The panel on the right shows its Pricing, Inventory, the Creatives you'll need and the Minimum spend. Then click New … Ad.

Format Where it runs Priced by Creative you need Minimum
Pop-under V2 A full page of your site, opened behind the visitor's tab CPM Link No minimum
Push Notification Notifications on desktop and mobile CPC Title, text & icon No minimum
Display Banners on sites and apps CPM Banner or HTML5 No minimum
Native In-feed ads that match the page CPM Image, title & description No minimum
Video Before or during video content CPM A video file No minimum
Google Search Google search results CPC Headlines & descriptions $5 a day
Microsoft Search Bing and Microsoft search partners CPC Headlines & descriptions $5 a day
Google Display Sites and apps on the Google Display Network CPC Images, headlines & descriptions $5 a day
Google Demand Gen YouTube, Shorts, Gmail and Discover CPC (Google sets the bid) Images, headline & a YouTube video $15 a day
Google PMax Every Google channel, optimised for conversions CPC (Google sets the bid) Images, logo, 3 headlines & 2 descriptions $5 a day
Facebook / Instagram The Facebook or Instagram feed CPC Image, headline & text $10 a day
ChatGPT Sponsored cards inside ChatGPT answers CPC Headline, image & link $25 a day

⚠️ The format is locked once you save. To try another format, create a new campaign.

The Google, Microsoft, Meta and ChatGPT formats have their own articles; see Running Google and ChatGPT ads from PPCmate. The steps below describe the full form for Pop-under, Push, Display, Native and Video. The table in the next section shows which sections the other formats get.

What each format shows

The menu on the right of the campaign page jumps between sections: Campaign · Creatives · Finance · Scheduling · Targeting · Inventory · Quality · Guard · Rules. It only lists the sections your format has. After you click Save, finished sections show a green ✓ and any section with an error turns red.

Format Targeting groups Not shown
Pop-under, Push, Display, Native, Video Location, Devices, Network & Carrier, Audiences, Content Features, Viewability (everything is shown)
Google Search Keywords, Languages, Devices, Demographics, Location (with map radius), Political Advertising AI Optimization, Max spend per hour, Bidding Goal, Ad Delivery, Schedule Ads, Frequency Capping, Inventory and Quality. The platform handles these itself.
Microsoft Search Keywords, Languages, Devices, Location (with map radius)
Google Display Languages, Devices, Demographics, Location (with map radius), Websites & Apps, Political Advertising
Google Demand Gen / PMax Languages, Devices, Location, Political Advertising; Demand Gen also Demographics and Where ads show
Facebook / Instagram Languages, Devices, Demographics, Interests, Location (with postal codes and map radius)
ChatGPT Context, Platforms, Location (countries and regions)

Landing-page guard and Automated Rules are available on every format.

Step 2: Campaign basics

  • Name (required): a name you'll recognise in reports, e.g. US-Mobile-Pop-OfferA.
  • Status: the on/off switch. Turn it off to save the campaign without spending until you're ready.
  • AI Optimization: an hourly autopilot. It blocks sources that spend without converting, prunes geos with a bad CPA and tunes bids toward profit. Every action is logged in Automated Rules, and a tracker is set up for you automatically. It costs +10% of spend while it's on, and it needs conversions to work.
    • AI Goal: Maximize profit (also prunes geos and steers bids), Find converting sources or Receive maximum traffic.

More detail: AI Optimization: what it does and what it costs.

Step 3: Creatives

The Creatives card shows the format you picked. Once the campaign is saved, clicking the format tile starts a new creative for that format.

  • Select Creative to add lists your existing creatives that fit this format.
  • New Creative opens the creative form and brings you back to the campaign afterwards. You can upload your own assets, or use AI to write the text or generate images on the formats that support it. For each creative you set a name, the Landing Page (URL) and the assets for that format. Tick Add UTM tags if you use Google Analytics. See creative formats and specs.
  • New creatives are reviewed before they serve. If one is refused, the reason is shown at the top of that creative.

A campaign needs at least one creative.

Auto A/B Test (when you attach 2 or more creatives) moves traffic automatically toward your best-performing creatives. Losing creatives are paused, never deleted.

  • Keep top: how many winners stay live.
  • Test duration: 24 hours, or 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. The test ends early if the result is clear.
  • After test: Pause losers, Pause + re-test weekly, or Keep 5% exploring.
  • Winner by: Auto, CTR, CPA, CPC or Conversions.

Step 4: Finance (budget and bidding)

Budget: fill in at least one. Both boxes stay red until one has an amount.

  • Total: the lifetime cap for the campaign.
  • Daily: the most the campaign can spend in a day.
  • Max spend per hour: optional. It stops a campaign from spending its whole day in one burst, and can't be higher than the daily budget.

Bid: shown as CPM or CPC, depending on the format. A bid of zero shows in red, because it can never win an auction. Then choose how bidding works:

  • Smart (the default): the engine prices every impression or click for you against the market, never above your budget.
  • Bid: your price is the maximum. On CPM you can add an Optimization:
    • None: your bid stays where you set it.
    • CTR: bids move toward the placements with the best click-through rate, between your CPM Min and CPM Max, over a Period of 1–30 days (default 7).
  • Fixed: every impression or click is bid at exactly your price.

🔴 Recommended bid: if your bid is below what this traffic usually costs, a red Recommended bid range appears under the field. A bid below that range is the most common reason a campaign gets no traffic.

Bidding Goal (with Smart or Bid):

  • None: classic bidding.
  • Target CPC or Target CPA: each bid is priced by what the placement is worth toward your target, never above your campaign price. Target CPA needs a Tracker. See Bidding Goals: CPA and CPC explained.

Tracker: choose the tracker that receives your conversions, or use the buttons next to it to edit it or create a new one. Add {CLICK_ID} to your landing URL to match conversions, and {COST} if you want real ROI in your own tracker. See Supported Macros.

Delivery estimate (the panel on the right) updates as you type:

  • Impressions per day or Clicks per day that your daily budget buys at your bid
  • Matching traffic available per day for your targeting
  • Budget lasts: how many days your total budget covers at your daily budget

Order: once the campaign is saved, the Order it's billed under appears here. Use ✏️ to edit it or + to create a new one.

On Google, Microsoft, Meta and ChatGPT, the bid is a fixed maximum CPC, and each platform has its own minimum CPC. Google Search, Demand Gen and PMax also have a bid strategy picker.

Step 5: Scheduling

  • Ad Delivery:
    • Distributed (the default): spreads your budget evenly across the flight.
    • As soon as possible: spends as fast as matching traffic allows.
  • Schedule Ads → Set days and hours: pick the days and hours your ads run. Without a schedule, ads run every day around the clock.
  • Flight Dates: the start date (defaults to today) and the end date. Every campaign needs an end date, on every format. The field stays red until you set one.
  • Frequency Capping: how often the same person, or the same traffic source, may see this campaign.
    • Quick presets: No cap, Light - 1 a day, Balanced - 3 a day or Heavy - 10 a day.
    • Or click + Add limit to write your own rule, e.g. "2 per User per 1 day" or "50 per Traffic source per 1 hour".
    • If you cap per traffic source, choose what a source means: the publisher domain, the site ID (the most precise; falls back to the domain) or the whole traffic source (SSP).

Step 6: Targeting

Each group opens when you click it, and its header shows how many rules are set. Every rule you add narrows your traffic, and some headers show how much reach you lose (e.g. −35% reach). Leave a group empty to target everything.

Location

  • Allowed Countries (empty = all countries) and Blocked Countries
  • States / Provinces (choose a country first) and Cities
  • Zip/Postal Codes
  • Geo Radius: draw a radius around a point on a map

Devices

  • Device Types: Desktop, Tablet or Mobile
  • Operating systems and versions
  • Allowed / Blocked Device Models: make or model text. For example, samsung blocks all Samsung devices, and sm-s928 blocks one model.
  • Browsers

Network & Carrier

  • Connection: Wifi, Ethernet or Cellular
  • Network Generation: 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G
  • Allowed / Blocked Carriers (e.g. vodafone), ISPs (e.g. Deutsche Telekom) and ASNs. ASNs are numbers like 15169, and they're useful for blocking datacentre networks.

Audiences

  • Include audiences (retargeting): only bid on people in these audiences. Your reach is limited to the audience size.
  • Exclude audiences: never bid on these people, e.g. people who already converted.
  • You manage audiences under Traffic → Audiences. See Retargeting and suppression with Audiences.

Content Features

  • Brand safe traffic only: switch it on to run only on brand-safe placements.
  • Categories and Types: for each one, choose Any, Only these or Exclude these, then click the chips. Each chip shows its share of traffic. The Matching traffic bar shows requests per day, and warns you if very little traffic matches.
  • Show on: All, Sites or Apps
  • Language
  • Campaign IAB Categories: up to 5. Publishers block ads by category, so fewer, accurate categories reach more traffic.

Viewability

Step 7: Inventory

Traffic Source Appearance sets the Referral source, which is what your landing page sees as the referrer:

  • Original Domains & Apps (the default)
  • Hidden
  • Custom domain: clicks pass through a PPCmate-branded domain or your own verified domain (Profile → Custom Domains).

Placement Options holds your allow-lists and block-lists. Paste values separated by commas, or upload a CSV:

  • Allowed / Blocked IPs (IPs or CIDR ranges)
  • Allowed / Blocked Placements (SubID): use the SubID values from your reports.
  • Use a saved list: attach an AI Search list of sites matched to your offer.
  • Allowed / Blocked Domains, Site IDs, Apps (bundle IDs like com.example.app), URLs and Keywords

⚠️ An Allowed list excludes everything it doesn't name. Use Allowed lists for tight whitelists, and Blocked lists for trimming.

Supply & Deals

  • Traffic Type (required): Mainstream, Adult or Mixed
  • Allowed SSPs (empty = all) and Blocked SSPs. Only supply that can serve your format is listed.
  • Deal ID List Mode (Off, Blocked or Allowed) and Deal ID List, for private deals

Supply Diversification

  • Max share of spend per supply partner stops one supply partner from taking most of your budget. New campaigns start at 60%. Slide it to No limit to turn it off.

Step 8: Quality

Fraud filtering always runs and can't be switched off. You're never charged for invalid clicks or for placements already found to be bad.

Traffic Quality Mode trades reach against false positives:

Mode IP Reputation Filter Datacenter & Proxy Filter Device & Geo Consistency
Verified Protected Protected Protected
Balanced Protected Off Off
Maximum Volume Off Off Off

Relaxing a filter gets you more volume, but it also lets through traffic the filters consider suspicious, such as VPN and proxy users. You can also flip individual switches, and the mode then shows Custom. See How does PPCmate protect my campaigns from fraud and bot traffic?

Step 9: Landing-page guard

Switch on Landing-page guard so you don't pay for clicks to a broken page:

  • Every 5 minutes, PPCmate opens your landing page the way a visitor would.
  • After 3 failed checks in a row, clicks go to your Backup URL. If you haven't set one, the campaign is paused.
  • After 2 good checks, it switches back automatically. You're notified each time.
  • The Backup URL must be on the same domain as your creatives' landing pages. If the whole domain is down, the campaign is paused.

Step 10: Automated Rules

Rules watch the campaign and act for you. For example, a rule can pause the campaign if it spends $X with no conversions. Save the campaign first, then add rules here. We recommend one or two safety rules before you scale. See Automating campaign management with Automated Rules.

Step 11: Save and launch

Click Save. The button is locked while the save runs, so a double click can't create two campaigns. PPCmate then runs a Campaign Health Check on the new campaign:

  • ✅ If you see "All checks passed — your campaign is ready to serve.", you're done.
  • ⚠️ Otherwise, the Health Check window opens and tells you exactly what's stopping delivery (bid too low, targeting too narrow, creative not approved, and so on), so you can fix it straight away.

If the form won't save, check the right-hand menu, where sections with a problem are red. Common causes:

  • no creative
  • no budget
  • no end date
  • a missing CPC bid
  • more than 5 IAB categories

After launch, open the campaign any time to see Total Delivered (impressions, clicks, CTR, spend, conversions, conversion value, eCPM, CPM paid and ROAS). On Pop-under, Push, Display, Native and Video you also see Where your ads run. Use Campaign Health Check whenever delivery looks off, and see Why isn't my campaign getting any traffic?

Running affiliate offers? The Offer Wall can set up the link, tracker and stop-loss for you on any of our formats. See Running Offer Wall offers on any ad format.

Need help at any step? Contact support.

Sep 28, 2026

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