How we run ads automatically: budgets, reviews and never spending twice
The DaveLabs Team2 min read
A good organic video deserves money behind it. Optiq Studio Enterprise turns a post into an ad on its own platform, funds it within a fixed budget, follows its numbers every hour and moves the money to what works.
One promotion, built safely
- 1One campaign, one ad set, one ad
Each promotion is built as a single campaign whose name carries the promotion's id, so an interrupted launch is picked up again, never made twice.
- 2Built switched off
Every part is created paused and switched on only once all of them exist, so a half-built campaign can never spend.
- 3The whole budget, fixed
The budget covers the whole run, from its first hour to its last, so a platform never spends more than was agreed.
- 4An estimate first
Before launch we record a low and a high figure for what the budget should buy, so the result is judged against what was expected.
What each platform optimises for
| Platform | For views | For visits |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube (Google Ads) | Demand Gen video campaigns | Demand Gen campaigns towards your link |
| Facebook and Instagram (Meta) | Engagement, optimised for ThruPlay: a 15-second watch, or the whole of a shorter film | Traffic, optimised for link clicks |
| TikTok | Video Views, optimised for 6-second views, as a Spark Ad on your own post | Traffic, optimised for clicks |
Targeting
Each promotion carries its countries, languages and placements. Audiences, offers and prices are tested side by side, a few at a time, and the budget follows the combination with the lowest cost per result. How we test.
Reviews and policies
Every platform reviews an ad before it runs. When one is refused, we record the policy it named and the words or pictures it flagged, fix the ad and send it again as a retry linked to the first, so the history is never lost.
Money, clearly
- On Google Ads each company has its own ad account, billed by Google to its own payment method.
- On Meta and TikTok, ads run from our ad accounts and are paid for within the cycle's budget.
- Every promotion records its currency and the exchange rate used, so cost is always clear in US dollars.
- Each platform's minimum daily budget is respected: about 1 US dollar a day on Meta, 20 on TikTok for each ad group.
- A promotion can be extended by days, each extension recorded with its own budget.
Watched every hour
Impressions, views, clicks, engagements, cost and conversions come home hourly while an ad runs, along with its review status and whether it is serving. The ads that bring results get more; the rest are stopped. Every number we keep.
