How to Set Up a Campaign on ad:personam Self-Serve DSP

Every programmatic campaign on ad:personam follows a clear, structured workflow. This guide walks you through the entire process — creating a campaign, understanding how the platform's objects fit together, and configuring a line item step by step.

Whether you are launching your first campaign or scaling an existing strategy, this is your single reference for the full setup flow.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following in place:

• Advertiser account — configured with the correct timezone and currency. See Creating an Advertiser for setup instructions.
• Active subscription — a STARTER plan (or higher) unlocks Display campaigns. A PRO plan adds Video, Connected TV (CTV), and In-App.
• Creative assets — at least one approved creative that matches your campaign channel (banner, video, or native).
• Conversion tracking (optional) — if you plan to use CPA optimisation, set up your pixels beforehand.

How the Platform Is Structured

ad:personam organises your advertising into a clear hierarchy. Understanding this structure makes campaign setup faster and helps you manage assets efficiently.

Advertiser
└── Campaign
    ├── Creative (shared across Line Items via Tags)
    └── Line Item
        └── Tag (links a Creative to a Line Item)

Advertiser is the top-level container. It defines your timezone, currency, and owns shared assets such as targeting lists, inventory source lists, and conversion pixels.

Campaign is a time-bound container. It sets the flight dates, currency, and brand safety rules. A Campaign does not control budget or targeting — those responsibilities belong to the Line Item.

Line Item is where your strategy lives. It controls budget, bid price, pacing, scheduling, frequency capping, targeting, inventory sources, and creative assignments.

Creative lives at the Campaign level and can be reused across multiple Line Items via Tags.

Tag is the bridge between a Creative and a Line Item. Each Tag carries its own configuration: name, active/inactive state, AdChoices label, impression and click tracking pixels, and an optional destination URL override.

For a deeper breakdown of how these objects relate, see the Platform Overview.

Step 1: Create a Campaign

A Campaign is the container that groups your Line Items together. Navigate to Campaigns and click Create Campaign to get started.

Campaign Fields

Brand Safety (Optional)

Enable the Brand Safety toggle to apply pre-configured content verification presets from IAS and DoubleVerify. Seven presets are available:

• IAS Brand Safety — Desktop Web Display
• IAS Brand Safety — Desktop Web Video
• IAS Brand Safety — Mobile In-App Display
• IAS Brand Safety — Mobile In-App Video
• DoubleVerify — Web and Mobile App
• DoubleVerify — CTV and Mobile App
• DoubleVerify — Fraud and Invalid Traffic

Each preset adds approximately $0.05 CPM to your media cost. You can also toggle Block Uncategorised Content to exclude pages that have not been classified.

What You Can Edit Later

After creation, only two settings can be changed:

• End date — extend or shorten your Campaign flight.
• Brand safety settings — enable, disable, or change presets.

All other fields (name, currency, start date, timezone) are locked once the Campaign is saved.

Budget at the Campaign Level

Campaign budget is always set to $0. This is by design — budget allocation happens at the Line Item level, giving you granular control over spending across different strategies within the same Campaign.

Campaign Objects: Creatives, Tags, and Line Items

Before diving into the Line Item setup wizard, it is worth understanding the three objects that live inside a Campaign.

Creatives are the actual ad assets — banners, videos, HTML5 units, or native ads. They are uploaded at the Campaign level and can be shared across multiple Line Items.

Tags connect a Creative to a Line Item. When you assign a Creative to a Line Item, a Tag is created automatically. Each Tag has its own configuration:

• Name and active/inactive state
• AdChoices label (show ad notice)
• Impression and click tracking pixels (HTTPS URLs)
• Destination URL override (replace or append to the Creative's default click URL)

Line Items are the strategy layer. A Line Item defines how, where, when, and to whom your ads are delivered. The rest of this guide focuses on creating a Line Item through the 10-step setup wizard.

Choose Your Campaign Type

Before the Line Item wizard begins, you select the campaign type. This choice is permanent — it determines which devices, platforms, pricing models, and settings are available throughout the setup process.

If you are on a STARTER plan, you can explore the full Line Item creation experience but only Display Line Items can go live. Upgrade to PRO to unlock Video, CTV, and In-App.

Line Item Setup: The 10-Step Wizard

Once you have selected a campaign type, the Line Item setup wizard guides you through 10 steps. Each step saves your progress automatically — you can navigate back and forth freely without losing data.

The sidebar tracks completion across all steps. Your Line Item is not submitted until you reach Review & Confirm at the end.

Step 1: Insertion Order

This step defines the Line Item's identity, schedule, and budget.

Your daily budget is automatically calculated as the lifetime budget divided by the number of flight days.

Read more: Insertion Order — Budget, Scheduling, and Pacing

Step 2: Geo Targeting

Define where your ads appear geographically. Two targeting modes are available, presented as tabs. They are mutually exclusive — selecting one clears the other.

Location Targeting

Targeting uses IP-to-location mapping. Each level is hierarchical — selecting a country unlocks its regions, and selecting a region unlocks its cities.

Hyperlocal Targeting

Target users based on GPS coordinates with a defined radius. This mode is ideal for mobile app and mobile web campaigns where device-level location data is available.

You can add up to 500 hyperlocal locations per Line Item. Radius guidelines:

• 100–500 m — venue-level (a store, stadium, conference centre)
• 500–1,000 m — neighbourhood-level
• 1,000–3,000 m — district-level
• 3,000–9,999 m — broad area coverage

Read more: Geo Targeting — Countries, Regions, Cities, and Hyperlocal GPS

Step 3: Environment

Configure which devices, browsers, operating systems, and connection types your ads can serve on. Available options depend on your campaign type.

Device Types (Required — at least one)

Browsers (Optional)

Select specific browsers to target: Chrome, Chrome Mobile, Safari, Mobile Safari, Samsung Browser, Edge (Chromium), Firefox. Leave empty to target all browsers.

Platforms / Operating Systems (Optional)

Available platforms are filtered by campaign type:

Connection Types (In-App Only)

For In-App campaigns, you can filter by connection type: Mobile, WiFi, or Wired.

Read more: Environment — Device Types, Browsers, Platforms, and Connection Types

Step 4: Inventory

Choose how your ads access programmatic supply.

For Open Exchange, ad:personam pre-selects a curated set of featured sellers — inventory sources we have vetted globally for quality and reach. You can use this default selection as-is, or expand it by selecting all available sellers if you prefer maximum reach.

The seller table is automatically filtered by your campaign type. Inventory sources that do not supply the relevant format are hidden — for example, a web-only seller will not appear in an In-App campaign. Each seller displays its name, ad exchange, and a bid multiplier you can adjust.

You can also create reusable inventory source lists outside of the line item wizard and apply them directly. Pre-built lists let you standardise your Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) strategy across multiple line items without reconfiguring sources each time. See Inventory Source Lists for the full guide on creating and managing these lists.

Read more: Inventory — Open Exchange vs Private Marketplace

Step 5: Brand Safety

Fine-tune where your ads appear by controlling domain and content category eligibility at the Line Item level. Options differ based on your environment (web vs app).

Web Environments

• Domain Targeting List — apply an allowlist or blocklist from your advertiser-level domain lists. A global blocklist template is applied automatically alongside your selection. See Domain Targeting Lists to learn how to create and manage these lists.
• IAB Content Categories — include or exclude content categories based on the IAB taxonomy. For example, exclude "Online Communities" or target only "Business & Industry" content. See IAB Content Categories for more details.

App Environments

• App Targeting List — apply an allowlist or blocklist from your advertiser-level app lists. See App Targeting Lists to learn how to create and manage these lists.
• IAB Content Categories are not available for app environments.

Read more: Brand Safety — Domain Lists

Step 6: Targeting

Define who sees your ads. Two targeting modes are available — select one via the radio group at the top.

Audience Segments

Target users based on third-party data from DMP providers (e.g., Oracle BlueKai, Eyeota, Nielsen). Each segment carries a CPM fee that is added to your media cost.

Key concepts:

• Segments are grouped by provider and category.
• Within a group, cost is calculated as the maximum CPM of selected segments.
• Across groups, costs are summed.
• Data source options per segment: Original, Cross-Device, and Lookalike extensions.

Retargeting

Re-engage users based on their previous interactions with your campaigns or tracking points.

• Campaign Retargeting — target users who clicked or engaged with prior campaigns. Configure match logic (Any vs All campaigns) and time windows (At Any Time, During Last X days/hours, More Than X days/hours ago).
• Tracking Point Retargeting — target users who triggered specific conversion pixels or tracking points.

Read more: Targeting — Audience Segments and Retargeting

Step 7: Ads

Select which creatives run in this Line Item and configure per-tag settings.

Creative Selection

Available creative types depend on your campaign type:

Only active creatives with a valid click URL can be selected. Once you begin selecting creatives of one type, the type selector is locked for that Line Item.

Creative Selection Table

The creative selection table lists all eligible creatives in the Campaign. Select the ones you want to run in this Line Item — a Tag is created automatically for each selected creative when the Line Item is submitted. Tag settings (name, tracking pixels, destination URL override, AdChoices label) can be configured during or after creation from the Campaign overview.

Read more: Ads — Creative Selection and Tag Configuration

Step 8: Settings

Configure delivery controls and placement preferences.

Frequency Capping

Control how often individual users see your ads.

Note: Frequency capping is disabled for CTV and In-App campaigns.

IAB Consent Targeting

Placement

Note: Placement settings are disabled for CTV and In-App campaigns.

Video Settings (Video Campaigns Only)

Read more: Settings — Frequency Capping, Consent, Placement, and Video

Step 9: Optimisation

Select the pricing model that drives your bidding strategy. The minimum bid price across all models is €0.20.

For CPC and CPA, you set a target price and a Max CPM ceiling — the maximum you are willing to bid per 1,000 impressions regardless of the optimisation target.

For Viewable CPM and VCR CPM, the target is set automatically by our algorithm — optimising toward at least a 70% in-view rate (vCPM) or a 70%+ completion rate (VCR). You only set the Max CPM ceiling.

For Dynamic CPM, you set the Max CPM and the system optimises bidding dynamically within that ceiling.

Read more: Optimisation — Pricing Models

Step 10: Review and Confirm

The final step presents a read-only summary of every setting configured across the previous nine steps. Review each section carefully before submitting.

Validation runs automatically before submission. The system checks:

• Line Item name is present and valid
• At least one scheduling period exists
• Budget is set with valid flight dates
• An active pricing model is configured
• At least one inventory source is selected
• At least one targeting rule group is defined
• At least one environment is set
• All Line Item dates fall within the parent Campaign's date range

If validation fails, errors are displayed in a list at the top of the page. Navigate back to the relevant step to fix them.

On submit, the system creates three objects in sequence:

1. Line Item — the full strategy configuration
2. Tags — one per selected creative, with your custom settings

A progress dialog tracks each step. On success, you are navigated to the Campaign overview where your new Line Item is ready for review or activation.

What Happens After Submission

Once your Line Item is created, an invoice is generated automatically and sent to your email. The Line Item remains inactive until payment is processed.

• Credit Balance covers the full amount — the budget is deducted automatically and the Line Item activates on its scheduled start date with no further action needed.
• Credit Balance covers part of the amount — the covered portion is deducted and an invoice for the remaining difference is sent. The Line Item activates once the outstanding invoice is paid.
• No Credit Balance — an invoice for the full budget is issued. Pay within the 14-day payment window to activate the Line Item on schedule.

After activation, an automated ad review process checks your creatives (typically within one business day). Performance data begins appearing within a few hours of delivery.

For the full breakdown of the launch process — including payment methods, budget edits, and Credit Balance management — see How to Successfully Launch Your Campaigns.