Rotate multiple creatives for a line item

If your line item contains multiple creatives, you can define which creative displays as part of a rotation when the line item is delivered to user. If your line item only contains one creative, creative rotation rules don't have any effect.

Define creative rotation

1. Go to the line item's Settings tab.

2. Under "Adjust delivery", select one of the following Rotate creatives options:

   • Evenly: Each creative is displayed equally at random.
   • Optimized: Creative with the highest CTR displays more often.
   • Weighted: Creatives displayed at a frequency you define.
   • Sequential: Creatives display to each user in the order you specify.

3. Click Save.

Changes to creative rotation only affect future delivery. Past delivery is not considered.
For example, if you add a creative to a line item set to deliver evenly, all of the creatives will deliver evenly from that point forward, regardless of how many times each creative was already delivered in the past.

Creative rotation settings

Evenly

If you select "Evenly" in the "Rotate creatives" list for a line item containing more than one creative of the same size, all creatives in the line item will rotate evenly and randomly. For example, Creative A may show three times before Creative B shows. However, over the course of the campaign, Creative A and Creative B will be shown evenly.

If you're using Ad Exchange line items, creatives rotate evenly by default.

Optimized

If a line item has more than one creative of the same size and you select the optimized rotation option, Ad Manager will give roughly 75% of the impressions to the creative with the highest clickthrough rate, and the remaining 25% to the other creatives.

This continually-updated rotation is calculated after thousands of impressions have been served. If a creative that originally received only 25% of impressions starts to earn a higher CTR, the optimized delivery will shift in favor of that creative.

Weighted

If you select "Weighted" in the "Rotate creatives" list for a line item containing more than one creative of the same size, each creative will rotate based on the frequency you specify. The weight you enter for a creative will be divided by the total weight for all creatives.

Set the rotation weight for each creative

Note: 1 to 100 are acceptable values for the "weight" attribute when setting rotation weight.

1. Click the line item's Creatives tab.
2. Click the Weight you want to edit.
3. Enter the delivery weight.
4. Click Save.

For example, if you have three creatives with the weights 5, 10, and 10, you can determine how often a creative will show by dividing your creative's weight by the total weight, which is 25.

Creative A	Weight: 5	5/25 = 20%
Creative B	Weight: 10	10/25 = 40%
Creative C	Weight: 10	10/25 = 40%

Why did my creatives deliver differently than the weights I entered?

• A line item's Display creatives setting can affect delivery weighting if only one of the line item's creatives is allowed, or if a roadblock is defined.
• Multiple sizes in an ad request can affect delivery weighting if a line item's creatives contain size overrides or are of a variety of sizes.

  Example

  An ad request containing both 300x250 and 300x600 might trigger a different creative rotation set than an ad request that only contains 300x250.

• If you've added creative-level targeting, Ad Manager evaluates the targeting before considering the weight of creatives. Only the weights of creatives in the same line item that satisfy targeting are considered.
  
  Other creatives in the same line item whose creative-level targeting didn't match the ad request are not considered.

  Example of weighted creatives with creative-level targeting

  Assume you have four creatives in the same line item that each have creative-level targeting—Creative A, B, C, and D. Creatives A and B are targeted to serve only to males, while C and D only to females. A and B are both weighted with a value of 5, while C and D are both weighted with a value of 45.

  Ad requests that target males serve equally (50-50%) to Creatives A and B as their weighted value is the same, while Creatives C and D are not considered since their targeting does not satisfy ad requests targeted to males.

• For Bulk or Price priority (non-guaranteed) line items, although the creatives will be selected using the weights, the line item may lose more often when low CTR creatives are selected. This is due to lower estimated line item CPM when low CTR creatives are selected. This can affect delivery weighting.
• Due to randomness, some deviation may occur that can affect delivery weighting set for creative rotation.

Sequential

Use this setting for when you want a user to see a series of creatives in order (sometimes referred to as "storyboarding"). Learn more about sequential rotation

Creative rotation isn't supported for Programmatic Direct
See the available features for Programmatic Direct.