How to launch a Display Advertising Campaign – Terminus Help Center

In this article you will learn how to create and launch a new Display Advertising campaign. This article refers to the new Display Campaigns (launched Spring 2023). If you do not yet have access to the new display ads, please reach out to your CSM. For help setting up a legacy display tactic, please see the How to Launch a Display Advertising Tactic article.

Prerequisites

To launch a display advertising campaign through Terminus, you must have Ad Experiences as part of your subscription.

Contents of this article include:

Getting Started
Campaign Information
Audience Selection
Audience Targeting
Budget and Duration
Creative Setup
Validation and Publishing
FAQs
Department Targeting Functions

Getting Started

Note: in our legacy campaign structure, a campaign was a group of one or more tactics, and a tactic was what allowed you define your unique advertising audience, delivers your creative set(s) to that audience, and allows you to set specific budgets for ad serving, etc. To simplify the experience for Marketers, the New Display Ads are each individual campaigns, and will soon be groupable by folders or tags.

To create a new campaign, click the "Create Campaign" button accessible on all of the main sections of the Terminus Ad Experiences navigation.

You’ll then be directed to the Create Campaign page. From here, you can choose the type of campaign you wish to create. Select Display Advertising:

Note: if your account has access to legacy display ads enabled for the purposes of creating CTV, Audio or Native ads, you will need to click the "legacy display ads" link.

Once you have selected Display Advertising, click on "Get Started". You will be taken to the campaign setup page. From here, the system will guide you through setting up key parameters such as campaign information, audience targeting, budgeting and dates.

Campaign Information

The first section you see will ask you to name your campaign and set an objective.

In the first box, enter the campaign name. The name must be unique and will help define the overall goal of the ad. For example, "Technology Vertical - Marketing Personas."
Next, you will define the campaign's objectives. This will allow you to align your campaign to our ABM playbooks and give your DMM an idea of how to best optimize your ads. (For more information on our playbooks, contact your CSM). Select the objective that best matches the overall goal of your campaign.

Once your objective and name have been selected, click "save and continue" to move to the next section. Note that at any time you can hit "Save and Close" to come back to your campaign later, or "Discard" to delete it.

Audience Selection

In the next section, you will select your campaign audience. Whereas in our legacy campaigns audiences came from multiple sources, the new display ads use our segment builder for sophisticated and flexible targeting. For more on creating segments, see the How to Create a Segment article.

In the dropdown, you will be able to select from any of your available segments:

Once you select your audience, you will see a preview of that segment, including key segment details as well as included accounts and their URLs. Please note that at this time this preview only refreshes every 12 hrs, so there might be a delay between when you update a segment and what you see here.

You will then have the option to choose whether to target all accounts or focus on a specific account. (Note: you will be able to select options like contextual, geographic or title targeting in the next section.) Focusing on a specific account allows you to create one-to-one (1:1) bespoke ad sets that are tailored to an individual account, and personalized to match their use unique case, pain points, or market.

To focus on a specific account, choose the "only use one account" option, and select the desired account from the drop down:

Once your segment and account selections are confirmed, click "Save and Continue".

Audience Targeting

The next section allows you to refine your audience options by department, contextual keyword, and geolocation, as well as define the times of day when the ads should run.

Contextual and Department Targeting

The first selection lets you determine how you want to refine the audience based on audience characteristics. Having different levels of targeting granularity allows Terminus customers to decide whether they want to stay at the broadest level and target an entire company, or drill down deeper and only target specific departments and/or senior-level decision-makers within specific departments. Note: while these tools are key parts of any advertising strategy, they can also drastically limit reach if used improperly. For guidance, please reach out to your DMM or account representative.

By default, we will maximize your reach by targeting all departments in a non-contextual manner.
You also have the option to narrow your reach by department. Note that this option is cookie-only, so this will prevent the ad from serving based on IP addresses.
- - - When selecting the department option, you will have the option to select one or more of our 27 functional groups specifically designed for B2B audiences. For a list of included functions in each department, see the Department Targeting table at the end of this article. This is a good option for customers who want to deliver function-specific messaging into different departments within their target accounts, and who are also targeting companies that have greater than ~200 employees. Within the department options, Terminus also provides the option to target the C-Suite and VPs. Selecting one of these two options will target the C-Suite and/or VPs across all departments in the company, and is not impacted by other department selections. Any specific department selections will include personas from the C-level and down. Selecting both "C-Suite" and/or "VPs" with additional departments will neither negate nor duplicate any personas included in any of your selections.
    - You can also choose to narrow down to senior decision makers by checking the box. This option targets manager-level and above (specifically Manager, Director, Senior Management, VP, CSuite, Board and Ownership levels)for the selected department(s), or across the entire company. Seniority targeting happens behind the scenes at the job level or function, and is not based on specific job titles. Filtering the data in this way ensures that we don’t leave out key decision-makers, particularly at larger companies where a manager can have significant decision-making power. This is generally a good option for customers that are targeting companies that have greater than ~200 employees.
Additionally, you may choose to use contextual targeting. Contextual targeting leverages a collection of keywords and phrases that scan ad site placements for textual content. This allows for your ads to be delivered across an infinite palette of content, and serve beside relevant browsing topics for your target audience.

Within contextual targeting you have two options:

- - You can select specific keywords from our standard keyword list to narrow your reach by title or industry.

- - If the Terminus keywords do not meet your needs, you can create your own custom lists of keywords, and have your DMM or CSM load them to Terminus. They will then be available in the custom lists drop down for selection. Please note that any customizations made in TTD will be overridden by these settings.

For more information on Contextual Targeting, please see the Contextual Targeting for Ad Experiences article, or reach out to your DMM.

Geo-targeting

The second section allows you to target specific locations. Geo-Targeting leverages location data to narrow targeting to only deliver impressions to audience members located within a specific location.

The first (recommended) option will allow for the broadest reach and target all locations.
The second option will allow you to select specific locations directly from the campaign. Within the campaign, geo-location can be applied at the country (US and Canada only), region (state, province or territory), or city level directly in the campaign. Note that only the top 200 cities in the US and the top 50 cities in Canada are supported at this time.
- - To select your location(s), choose city, region or country in the first drop down, and the corresponding location in the second one. You can choose as many locations as you want.
In the event that you need to target cities or regions in the US or Canada not included in these options, you can choose the third option for custom geo targeting. If this option is selected, the campaign will launch in a paused state so that your DMM can make the desired location adjustments.

Time and Day Targeting

The third section allows you to refine the times and days at which your ad is displayed.

You can choose to display the ads during waking hours (recommended), business hours or all day. Additionally, you can choose to display every day (recommended) or only on weekdays.

Once you have selected all of your targeting options, hit "Save and Continue" to continue to the next section.

Budget and Duration

This section allows you to specify the budgets and the run times of the campaign.

Budget: You are required to select a daily budget for the campaign, and you also have the option to set a total budget or a max spend per account. To get recommendations on budgeting, contact your Terminus CSM or reach out to support through the Terminus Support Portal. Both daily budgets and total budgets can be adjusted at any point while your tactic is running. Note: no total budget is set, the system will default to $200,000
Duration: You have the option set a specific start date for your campaign 48hrs from now, or have it start as soon as possible. Additionally, you can choose an end date for your campaign, or you can let it run "indefinitely". This means the campaign will run until it is paused, archived, or 730 days has passed. Note: If you set a total budget and a specific end date, your campaign will stop running based on whichever setting is reached first.

If your campaign run times won't allow you to spend your whole budget or you would run out of money too soon, the system will give you a warning and let you know what adjustments need to be made.

Once your budget and duration settings are completed, hit "Save and Continue".

Creative Setup

In this section, you will be able to upload ad creative files and associated landing page URLs. You will have the option to either upload new creatives, or re-use existing creatives from your Ad Library.

By default, your campaign will have one creative group. However, you may want to test different ad creative designs or messaging to see which one resonates better with your target accounts. To do this, you will want to set up multiple creative groups, which will be explained later in this article.

A campaign can have up to 100 creatives added within the 5 Ad Group limit. To add creatives, you can either upload new ones or use existing ones.

Upload New Creative

With this option, you will upload all the creative files for the different ad sizes you wish to use directly from your computer. Check out our Ad Creative Guidelines for more information on our recommended and supported ad sizes, as well as accepted file formats and file naming conventions.

You will also be asked to include the destination URL for each ad, which is the landing page you want people to direct to when they click on the ad. Note: We support the use of UTM parameters as well as custom tracking URLs.

Clicking the Upload New Creatives link will bring up the uploader screen.

You can drag and drop or load files to this modal. The system will check your files for errors as it loads:

Once all your files are ready, click continue to add them to the ad and the ad library. At this point you can add URLs to the assets. To do this, you have two options:

Click the ellipsis next to the individual asset and select Edit. This will bring up the URL editor.
Select the checkbox next to one or more assets and click Edit URL. This will bring up the URL editor. Any URLs entered in this modal will apply to all selected assets

Add Existing Creatives

To use ad creatives that have been previously uploaded, click on "Add Creatives".

From there, you will be able to search and select ads from your Terminus Ad Library. Creatives already in your ad will show as selected, though you may unselect them to remove them. You can search for specific creatives by name, date added, format or dimension. Select any creatives you want to add to your campaign and hit "Continue":

For both existing and newly uploaded creatives, you can remove them by either hitting the ellipsis next to the creative and selecting "remove" or by checking the box to the left of one or more creatives and hitting "Remove".

Creative Groups

In the event that you want to test different ad creative designs or messaging to see which one resonates better with your target accounts, you can create two or more different sets in order to test which group generates the most engagement.

By default, a new campaign will have one group. You can edit the name of the group by clicking the pencil icon:

To add an additional group, click the "Create new group" option on the left. This will create a new group that you can rename by clicking the pencil icon:

To add creatives to your group, follow the same steps you did for the first one. Additionally, you can move creatives from one group to another by checking the box to the left of them and hitting "Move To", and selecting the desired group.

You may creative up to five groups, with a max of 20 creatives each.

Note: Please ensure creative images are different in each group. Duplicate creatives with the same dimensions, same image, same landing page, but different names will cause an error.

Validation and Publishing

Once you have entered all of your creatives, you will be able to hit "I'm Finished" button at the very bottom:

After you hit "I'm Finished", the system will automatically validate your campaign. Any errors will be displayed in the area where they occurred:

Once you correct the error(s), click anywhere in the campaign to re-trigger validation.

Once the campaign has successfully passed validation, you will be able to publish your campaign:

This will prompt you to confirm publication.

Once you hit yes, you will be redirected to the campaign overview page.

Note: if your account is configured to deploy campaigns in paused mode, or you have selected custom geo targeting, your campaign will be paused. Please contact your DMM or CSM for next steps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I target countries other than US and Canada?

For other countries, you will need to set up a global campaign - for more information see the Global Targeting with Ad Experiences article.

How soon will my campaign launch if I don't have a start date?

Once submitted, the ad networks will verify and approve your campaign, which can take up to 48hrs. Note that if you selected Custom Geo Targeting or your account has campaigns set to deploy in a paused state, this could take longer.

How does the max spend per account work?

You now have the ability to set an account-level spend cap. This means that you can limit the maximum amount of budget that any individual account can receive. Once an account has hit this cap, it will no longer be served ads in the campaign. To set a cap, just go to the Budget & Duration section and enter a value for "Max Spend per Account".

Department Targeting

Below is the list of included functions for each department option available in the platform:

Option	Included Functions
C-Level	Principal, Partner, Founder, Advisory Board, CEO, CFO, Chair, CIO, CMO, COO, CTO, Officer (Other), President, Board, Board Member, Owner
Customer Service	Customer Service, Support, Technical Support, Customer Relations
Educators	Educator, Education, Education Management & Administrators, Professors & Teachers
Finance	General Finance, Financial Analyst, Corporate Finance and M&A, Accounting, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Audit, Tax Specialists, Investor Relations, Risk Management, Economist, Finance, Finance Banking, Investment Banking, Wealth Management
Finance Accounting	Accounting
Finance Corporate	Finance Management, Treasurer, Corporate Finance and M&A, Investor Relations
General Engineering	Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Government	Public Service, Lobbyists, Elected Officials Government Employees, Public Interest
Healthcare	Healthcare Professionals
HR	General HR, Employee Development, Recruiting, Benefits and Comp, HR Management, Payroll, Community Development, HR/Human Resources, HR Diversity
HR Employee Development	Employee Development
HR Recruiting	Recruiting
IT	Engineering, Software Engineering, Network Administration & Engineering, Systems Administration & Engineering, Computing & IT
It Data Analyst	Database Administration & Design, Data Management
IT Engineering	Engineering, Software Engineering, Web Development & Management, Information Technology
IT Operations	Network Administration & Engineering, Systems Administration & Engineering, Database Administration & Design, Information Security, Information Technology
Legal	Legal, Compliance & Governance
Marketing	General Marketing, Marketing Management, Product/Market Management, Marketing, Marcomm, Advertising, Writer/Editor
Operations	General Operations, Logistics, Quality Assurance, Production, Technical Support, Records Management, Maintenance, Secretary, Office Manager, Procurement, Project Management, Operations Management, Events, Administrator, Administrative, Assistant, Analyst, Admin
Operations Facilities	Maintenance, Office Manager, Safety
Operations Logistics	Logistics
Operations Management Admin	Operations Management
Operations Procurement	Procurement
Product	Product/Market Management, Project Management, General R&D, Research & Development, Creative, Designer
Research Science	General R&D, Research, Research & Development
Sales	Sales Executives, Sales, Sales Support
VP	VP