How to run Blaze Ads

This week I’m running my first set of Blaze ads for a partner site.

Below, you’ll find some information and guidelines on how to run a campaign successfully.

Before you run the ads:

Before you can get started, you’ll want to ask the partner a couple of clarifying questions:

What content are we promoting?

• A post
• A page
• A product

An important note on the type of content you select. The default setting is that the ad will run with

• The ad title is pulled in from the page/product/post title.
• The body copy is pulled in from the excerpt or the first few sentences of the page text.
• The ad’s image is the page’s featured image.

All of this is editable while setting up the ad. But it’s worth sharing this with the partner upfront in case they’d like to customise it.B04FCCAll of this is editable while setting up the ad. But it’s worth sharing this with the partner upfront in case they’d like to customise it.

What is the objective of the campaign?

• Engagement
• Awareness
• Sales
• Traffic

What locations should we target?

• You can choose a country, state/province or city.
• You can add as many options as required in this step.

Are there any specific interests we should target?

• The list of interests is long as each interest has subcategories, but here are the main interests:
  • Arts and Entertainment
  • Automotive
  • Business
  • Careers
  • Education
  • Family & Parenting
  • Health & Fitness
  • Food & Drink
  • Hobbies & Interests
  • Home & Garden
  • Law
  • News
  • Personal Finance
  • Society
  • Science
  • Pets
  • Religion & Spirituality
  • Shopping
  • Sports
  • Style & Fashion
  • Technology & Computing
  • Travel
  • Real Estate

Remember: the more targeted your ad is, the lower your reach will be. This is expected.

Budget:

Our team’s approved budget is $50 per day, for a maximum of 28 days. You add the budget by going into the site owner’s Store Admin (most likely our team user) and adding the Blaze credits.

NOTE: We operate out of a shared pool of credits across all our sites, so if credits are already available, please don’t assume they’re available for your campaign as they might be accounted for in someone else’s campaign. Add the required amount of credits you’ll be using above what’s already there. (This process may change in the future).

We are not constrained to a single ad for the 28 days. Feel free to run 4x ads of 7 days and change up the targeting to test different results if you’re interested.

Blaze UI

There are two ways of accessing Blaze Ads, and while each looks the same on the front end, they operate slightly differently on the back end.

There is the Jetpack UI, where your URL will be [DOMAIN]/wp-admin/tools.php?page=advertising#!/advertising/DOMAIN

By default, you’ll create the ad via Jetpack if you go WP-Admin > Tools > Advertising

There is also the WordPress.com/Calypso UI, where the URL is https://wordpress.com/advertising/[DOMAIN].

By default, you’ll create the ad via WP.com if you login via WordPress.com > Select your site > Tools > Advertising.

Publishing the Ads

When you are ready to publish the ad(s), you can follow any one of these support docs with the step-by-step instructions:

Jetpack

WordPress.com

Once the campaign has been published, it will be reviewed. You can monitor this progress and the subsequent results under the Advertising > Campaigns tab.

Support

Head on over to WordPress.com/Support if you get into trouble.