Manage your campaign bids with Max CPC

Maximum Cost-Per-Click (Max CPC) is an optional setting that gives you full control over your campaign bidding. It acts as a hard ceiling for your bids. When you turn this feature on, you instruct our system never to pay more than this specified amount for an individual click.

Our bidding system always searches for the lowest price in an auction. Max CPC simply ensures your final cost will never go over your chosen limit.

Setting a competitive Max CPC helps you move from general budget tracking to precise profit protection. This helps you to:

• Maintain strict cost control: Ensure a firm limit on the amount you are prepared to pay for a click. This mechanism guarantees that the system will never place a bid exceeding the partner's pre-defined maximum.

• Improve budget efficiency: Direct your spend toward traffic that aligns with your specific cost discipline.

• Enhance KPI tracking: Evaluate performance against your own commercial guardrails with a clearly defined click-cost limit.

• Scale with confidence: When set at a competitive level, it ensures you capture the most valuable traffic within your budget.

Before you update your bidding strategy, make sure you meet these conditions:

• You have active access to your zDirect account with campaign management permissions.

• You have an ongoing or new Sponsored Products campaign.

Navigate to your campaign budget preferences. You can set your limits at two different levels:

• Campaign level: Apply a single, unified limit across all chosen countries.

• Country level: Set specific limits tailored to individual countries to match local competition.

If you turn Max CPC on, you must enter a value for every active country in that campaign. The system does not support automatic bidding for some countries while capping others in the same campaign.

Consider your bid levels carefully, as your cap directly influences your ability to win ad spaces:

• High caps: Increase your eligibility for more auctions. Our algorithm still prioritises efficiency and attempts to win clicks at the lowest price possible.

• Low caps: If your cap is too low, the system will not enter auctions where the cost to win exceeds your limit. This can lead to campaign underperforming and unspent budgets.

• Hierarchy of controls: the CPC rule wins. Even if you try to make the system spend faster by increasing the Positive Pacing Factor, the system cannot spend more than the Max CPC you've set. The price cap prevents faster spending.

If you are unsure what value to enter, use one of these three methods:

• Historical data: Set your Max CPC 30% to 50% higher than your historical average CPC to give the system room to win high-value auctions.

• Unit economics: Calculate your cap based on your target return on investment (ROI): $$Max\ CPC = Target\ CPA \times Conversion\ Rate$$

• Recommended values: Use the data-driven recommendations in the user interface. These balance local market rates with performance trends. Please note these recommendations are on a country level and are not tailored per individual brand partner.

• Cause: Your cap is likely too low for the current market competition.

• Solution: Increase your Max CPC by 20% to 25% and monitor performance, or turn the control off to resume automatic optimisation.

Status: This means the system is working perfectly. Our algorithm is winning placements for you well below your maximum price cap.

If you need help setting up your bidding caps or encounter errors, reach out to our Partner Care team. Please submit a request via the support form using the topic zDirect and request type Business Profile.